Dragon Ball: Paradise Lost
by Captain Claymore
Summary: A series of unfortunate events that have made the history of the Dragon Ball world slightly deviate from its normal course has caused the subject of the world's most embarrassing folly to get another chance to, hopefully, not mess things up nearly as bad while residing on Earth. Not sure how often I'll update this. This will always be passion-driven, yet still a side-story.
1. Native Soil Terror

The eyes of a tyrant glared upon a marble floating in space, a ruby covered with tendrils of white shrouds. His gaze was the sum of both the ire that the presence of this solitary space rock brought up from inside his tiny yet cold and hardened core and the soothing solace that his own ethereal reflection from the illuminator provided. A soft noise of the opening mechanical doors made the red irises of the tiny terror move more towards the right, where the reflection of the entering right-hand man of his could have been seen.

"Lord Frieza, I have come to inform you that we have received a signal from King Vegeta. All is ready for your arrival same with the inspection you have requested." The elegant, green man reported.

"Excellent… Don't be in too much of a rush to land. When dipping their toes into the water, both freezing and boiling, one makes sure to do so slowly, one toe at a time." A despicable grin covered Lord Frieza's face. His tale smacked around thin air like a whip of an overzealous animal tamer, delighted to be whipping the King of the jungle as if that granted this exalted status all to himself.

"Very well, I will make sure to relay that to the pilots." Zarbon bowed the upper half of his body after pressing his right hand to his chest. It was evident from his face that something uncomfortable was on his mind.

"What is it, Zarbon?" Lord Frieza wondered, his face turned strict and intolerant as if this previous gleam of excitement was all just a ploy he had pulled from his box of toys.

"Well… It is just that… Lord Frieza… You don't look too happy about landing in Planet Vegeta, Sir." Zarbon scratched the back of his head due to the itch that this discomfort caused him. Presuming to be able to speak to Lord Frieza, the emperor of the entirety of space was extremely dangerous. The elegant soldier of the space tyrant had seen his master kill his men for less.

"I am not. This is work, nothing more." Frieza closed his eyes. Despite knowing full well that his emperor was holding something back, Zarbon was not willing to gamble the integrity of his chest cavity on pushing farther. The emperor's right-hand man bowed once more and excused himself. Before he could leave, however, the chilling cough of his master stopped the elegant servant in his boots.

"Zarbon, please do call up Pee from Human Resources," Frieza said with a stoic face. Despite the apparent unhappy of his boss, Zarbon felt somewhat relieved by his master's glare. The space emperor usually killed with a far much more overjoyed grimace than this one.

"Will do, Sir." Zarbon bowed his head once more before departing.

A handful of moments later, an alien soldier wearing standard issue Frieza Army armor with the cape and an HR badge on the left side of his chest entered the emperor's quarters. He found the emperor in the same pose that his right-hand man had left him in.

"Is everything ready? We may receive an influx of new recruits after this check-up on King Vegeta's progress. That is, after all, the purpose of our visit, and I would absolutely loathe appearing inefficient." Lord Frieza inquired.

"Y-Yes, Sir! We've got paperwork all set and ready for new recruits, just short of their names, the equipment is ready, we've arranged sections of new missions for potential new recruits as well! Life-shaving ones, as you've requested!" the emerald alien with an immensely protruded head reported. His black irises, sunken inside the red sclera of his eyes twitched and shook from time to time. The tyrant demanded only the absolute efficiency from his bureaucratic matters. That being said, Lord Frieza was disappointed in his HR department far less than in his planet-conquering army forces and Pee from Human Resources took great pride in that fact.

"Excellent. I knew I could always trust you, Pee from Human Resources. Is something else the matter?" the space emperor turned to his subordinate with the left side of his face, still floating in his chair in front of the illuminator depicting the expanding reds of Planet Vegeta as the ship approached its orbit.

"Well… It's just that… It seems a little bit odd to send all of our potential recruits out to these kinds of missions. It's like you want all those recruits to die, after all the trouble it has been for you, Lord Frieza to raise, train and recruit them and your HR department to make their entry into the army official." Pee from Human Resources shook his hands in front of him. He was absolutely terrified of expressing these thoughts directly to his emperor, however, something cold and stoic about the tyrant's glare extracted all the truth from the chest of the green alien.

"I see… Well… I would like to be truthful with you, my dearest subordinate, if you will allow me this moment of honesty." A sly smile twisted the oversized head of the tiny space emperor. "I absolutely loathe these Saiyans! Despise them, the thought of setting foot on their planet makes me sick to where I could puke until I would die, however, that death would be mercy because I would never ever have to set my eyes on this rancid place again!"

Pee from Human Resources shook from every accentuation, every moment of a raised tone from his master. The administrator of Frieza Army bureaucrats took a couple of steps backward in sheer terror from the excitement and something profoundly vile emanating from his emperor.

"If I had the chance to blow this planet right out of the sky and free up some space for something new, I would have done so over a decade ago!" Lord Frieza threw his fist out, leaning in front of his chair to where his clutched limb stopped just inches shy from the illuminator. "However, because of someone troublesome, someone that, for now, ranks above even me, I was unable to do so. At the last possible second, right before this scorn in my eyes could have been eradicated, my hand was stopped…"

"Lord Cold stopped you, Lord Frieza? B-But why?" Pee from Human Resources froze in place. He was both terrified of the honesty that the tiny calamity was sharing with him but also curious about it as well. If he could obtain this knowledge, he'd be the star of HR, the department would think that he's in the upper echelon of the Frieza Army to where the emperor spills the contents of his soul to someone like Pee from Human Resources.

"Not my father… Lord Beerus… The God of Destruction himself demanded that I did not destroy this planet, is this not ironic?" Lord Frieza turned to his subordinate even more, now subjecting most of his terrifying visage to the already petrified employee of his.

"I-I'm not sure I understand…" Pee from Human Resources shook his head.

"That is perfectly understandable." Lord Frieza turned his chair back at the illuminator. A loud pop followed behind him. Pee from Human Resources collapsed on the ground with his eyes completely sunken red, his mouth wide open. Had it not been for the exposed outward chest cavity of the Frieza Army member, he would have appeared to have been somewhat alright, perhaps just fallen and struggling to stand back up.

"Lord Frieza!" a handful of soldiers in full armor set, helmets, scouters, and arm cannons entered the emperor's headquarters only to see the unfortunate fate of their head of Human Resources. One that was not uncommon enough to warrant more than respectful fear of their tyrant floating and staring at one blank spot of the planet he was landing on.

Somewhere down on that very same planet, a King accompanied by his entourage who were much less interested in a lonely shine in the sky and were much more interested in watching their immediate surroundings stared back at the tyrant, the two pairs of eyes far too distant to cross paths until one of them approached the other. It was sheer instinct, to one – one of survival, for another – one of unadulterated hatred that connected the two stares from such a distance.

* * *

A handful of low-ranking Saiyan soldiers ran over the corner. They had been bustling about the entire morning, looking for one of the new recruits and the uncanny sound of munching had tipped the Saiyans off to the recruit's potential location. The bunch turned the corner behind the tall-standing, futuristic building only to see a lone Saiyan girl sitting by a food container and helping herself to the different courses of meats from various species of aliens that the Saiyans tended to label as "meat".

"You low-class trash! You are eating somebody's mission rations! Not to mention the damage you've done to the ship by yanking this whole compartment out of it!" one of the Saiyan soldiers stepped forward with their fists ready to pummel the young woman who's been helping herself to somebody's survival rations. While the man-sized container was not going to last the pair of Saiyans too long, Saiyans were a lot that ate plentifully which meant that whatever lacking tonnage of sustenance this food provided was vital for the planet-conquering missions.

A female Saiyan stepped out and raised her hand to stop the Saiyan soldier about to beat the living shit out of this deviant.

"She's a recruit, you know that. Lord Frieza's gonna have King Vegeta's head if we don't deliver him the numbers." The Saiyan female with temper about as short as her hair growled back at the numb-skulled soldier.

"You could have fooled me, she's not even wearing her armor, for Pete's sake!" another soldier flipped out at the woman. "She's in your squad, isn't she? Discipline this brat! She's not nearly strong enough to be this much of trouble!"

"And, goddammit, will you stop eating at least while you're being disciplined for running away from your duty to stuff yourself full!?" the first soldier shoved the female instructor out of his way and approached the young female, grabbing a whole handful of her long bed-hair and dragging her back to the instructor. The rambunctious youth just kicked and grunted about but did not put up that much of resistance.

"Make sure she's presentable in twenty!" the mid-class Saiyan soldier shoved his finger into the instructor's face. "For someone so worried about the fate of our King Vegeta, you're awfully ignorant of the fact that one of your recruits is eating our mission supplies in her straps, the soldier remarked while leaving, referencing the absolute minimum amount of clothing that the young troublemaker was wearing, likely whatever she fell out of bed this morning with.

The female instructor sighed while looking at the grinning teen who was sitting on her bottom with her legs crossed as she chuckled right at her instructor's face.

"You didn't use to be this much trouble…" the instructor groaned. "What happened with you, Chayote? Why didn't you report for the final drills this morning?"

"I'm sorry, Yuca, I overslept!" the girl snickered, dragging her hand across the back of her bed hair in apology. "And then I tried making my way to the drills but I could neither find my armor nor you, and then I noticed this spaceship just ready to go and…"

"You decided to rip out its food container with your bare hands and eat what's inside it?" the instructor posed with her hands over her hips, leaning over the recruit. Had the brat not needed to be ready in twenty minutes for the demonstrative drill with Lord Frieza himself, it was self-evident that this brat would be in for a decent beating.

"Well… Not at first. At first, I… Just started thinking about stuff…" Chayote looked back at the ship that, despite the fact that it was missing a man-sized piece of it, still looked ready to carry somebody somewhere they needed to go. Somewhere significantly closer than the usual space pods that put the one using it in stasis.

"Daydreaming again?" the female instructor groaned while grabbing her student by the hair and dragging her through the mechanical door leading up to the dressing rooms.

"I mean… When am I gonna go out there? You know, see space and different planets? I am really excited about today but also… Scared!" the teen exclaimed in both physical and inner pain.

"How can you be both excited and scared? I thought you wanted to travel the universe, see the different planets and the different species all over it…" the instructor just stopped speaking, leaving something ominous out in the air. There was something that Yuca was not telling Chayote and the teen had always felt it. Ever since Yuca started training Chayote since she was five, the brat could tell that there was a part of her upcoming job that Yuca purposefully left out.

"I am… It's just that… We're soldiers, right? Means we have to fight and… Well, we haven't done a whole lot of training. You've barely taught me anything resembling fighting skills." Chayote complained, with a swift thrust of her feet she kicked up on her own feet and gently shoved her instructor's hands off of her ear.

"There's no time for that. Get dressed, I've taught you plenty. You know how to throw a punch and even a kick, right? That'll set you up for most of what you'll need…" Yuca placed her hands over her hips again. There she was deflecting again.

"Yeah but… The others… Even in my own squad, their power levels soared since they were children. Mine just… It feels like you're holding me back." Chayote complained while putting on her armor. It looked tight but then when she slipped it over her body, the thing fit like a glove. Even if somebody else put on her armor, it'd have fit them like a glove. It was why there did not seem to be much of a labeling system for the armor inventory as there was for the other gadgets and tools on Planet Vegeta.

"You're just being paranoid. The reason you're weaker than some of your peers is that you're low-class. You've always known that. I did the best I could prepping you for what's ahead, that's my job." Yuca deflected it again.

"It's easy to debunk your lies over all that inner guilt brewing inside you!" Chayote stretched her arms and legs out to get used to the armor stretching over her body and even out the ridges of the black jumpsuit that went under it.

The mechanical door to the locker rooms opened up and a tall and bulky man made his way inside. One of regal and masculine visage, followed by a handful of not too much less badass-looking folks that watched the King's back wherever he went. The King had easily the highest power level on the entire planet, some claimed that he may have even rivaled the power levels of Lord Frieza's two lapdogs by now.

"King Vegeta!" both the instructor and the recruit kneeled before their King in complete submission and respect.

"Good, you're ready. I've noticed we were one recruit short. We're delivering Frieza with quantity, not quality, I trust you haven't forgotten that, Yuca." The King declared with a moderate grumble to his voice that was muffled only by the relief to see that his final tribute to Frieza's Army was in a somewhat presentable condition. "There's no time to waste, have her join the rest at once!"

"Yes, Sir!" Yuca bowed in complete respect and dragged her student by her back all the way to the main hall of the royal palace where the presentation of the new recruits was to be taking place. By now the instructor did not trust her student to behave while outside her immediate grasp which was why the only time she had let go of the teen was when she outright shoved the girl toward her peers.

Lord Frieza observed the scene with moderate amusement in his eyes. Amusement that only lasted for so long as the fearsome emperor took off with his floating space throne and approached the King right up to the bottom step of his own throne, glaring up at the monarch with less than amused eyes.

"I am exquisite to see that you've delivered your tributes to the Frieza Army, King Vegeta." Lord Frieza spoke up, despite his somewhat content tone, the stoic expression of the emperor made King Vegeta wary of the direction that the little tyrant's speech was about to take. "However, I have noticed that you are not quite delivering me your hand-picked best, so to speak."

"That was never the deal, Lord Frieza, I would love to deliver you all of my elite, however, the one-in-a-million rate of an elite's birth is what defines the elite and what grants them their value." Sweat drops began forming on King Vegeta's forehead. Chayote lifted her eyebrows in surprise, she had never seen her King this worked up about something.

"Yes, usually there's at least one or two top-dogs alongside the box of puppies you provide me with. However, given how twelve whole years have passed since our last deal, I believe it is about time we amend that deal a tiny bit." Lord Frieza made an affectionate, if not triumphant smile. Given his almighty status in this room, he reveled in the power to make whatever amendments he wanted with the deal. So… This was to be Chayote's future employer, the emperor she was raised in a somewhat off-handed and lackluster manner to serve to her utmost ability until the day she met a glorious end on the battlefield.

"Amends?" King Vegeta bit his lip in frustration as a vein popped out in the side of his forehead. A less than dignified look for the Saiyan monarch, however, nobody appeared to be as shocked by the reduction to utter rubble of the Saiyan authority in the face of the chillingly terrifying emperor of space himself.

"That is correct, your majesty, every recruit you provide me with must overcome a test. A minimum bar of quality, so to speak. If the recruit fails to pass the test, they must be replaced immediately by someone who is capable of rising to the occasion. After all, as the universe's premier military force, we have a standard to uphold and, I am afraid, your runts from the litter shall not do." Frieza chuckled at the end of the sentence, sending chills down the spines of every Saiyan and even most of his own alien force lined up in an admirable formation behind him.

"V-Very well… Lord Frieza… However, have in mind that…" King Vegeta began what seemed more and more like groveling.

"Oh, your majesty, I am well aware that this is so sudden and unexpected. I am also more than aware that these are your young, just out of military training chicks. Just like I requested, ones whose loyalties can still be amended, just like this deal…" Frieza took his time to chuckle once more, "For that reason, the test for these lot shall not be anything too unusual. I'd say that the very standard bar of gutter trash shall be the very Saibamen you Saiyans employ from time to time."

"I… I see… Saibamen…" King Vegeta sighed in relief. "Yes, that does seem suitable. I am sure that these recruits can overcome the challenge of a Saibaman quite easily. Most of them have trained with Saibamen, after all."

"Magnificent!" Lord Frieza exclaimed. "We have measured the worth of Saibamen grown on Planet Vegeta's soil at about 838. I would say that it is a sufficient bar for new recruits to leap over."

After he was finished talking, the space emperor moved aside with his floating throne only for his army to follow. From the opening in the formation, an entire squad of Saibamen marched out in unison, all pulsing in a shade of darker yellow, ranging on softer brown, that appeared to match the combination of wheat mixed with gravel.

"Ki-ki-ki!" the squad squeaked collectively.

"In addition to the recruits, I trust the Saiyans can be trusted to provide with ample cultivated Saibamen seeds as they have been rather complicated to cultivate in such copious amount." Lord Frieza's face twisted with a grin as his grip around King Vegeta's neck reached ever wider.

"It is not a simple process but nobody can accomplish the task better than the Saiyans." King Vegeta bowed his head for the emperor, if anybody ever was foolish enough to question who was truly in charge, this gesture quashed any doubts.

"Well then… Shall we begin the testing process? I am feeling like starting from the bottom end." The smirking calamity raised his finger and pointed it right at Chayote – the last recruit to be dragged into the presentation and to join the fold.

"It does not matter. I just hope that you have the time to sit through the numerous engagements. Most of these recruits are stronger than the Saibamen with a decent margin, however, the Saibamen are a considerable challenge regardless." King Vegeta expressed his feelings about the length of the upcoming testing process.

"Indeed, at times I find these Saibamen to be more trustworthy than my own men. Nevertheless, I shall trust the warrior race to entertain me thoroughly." The little tyrant spread his arms out as his mouth gapped with a sadistic smile while the alien emperor spoke.

"Very well, recruit, please do not stall the test longer than necessary! Make sure to not disappoint your Saiyan ancestry!" King Vegeta addressed Chayote directly. The teen had never been so proud of herself – the King himself spoke to her, addressed her as a trusted soldier of the force and then entrusted this mission, to repeat the history of the Saiyans conquering the planet of the Saibamen and proving her worth to Lord Frieza and the entire Frieza Army!

Chayote did not need to be encouraged twice. The itching to fight Saiyan warrior dashed right in front of the first Saibaman and took a fighting pose.

"Begin when you will, sweet girl." Lord Frieza rested his impressive head on his bent fist as he prepared for a lengthy and likely entertaining show. Unwillingly the entirety of the Frieza Force and the Saiyans present in the main hall of the royal palace moved back to form a circle around the anxious to kick ass Saiyan teen and the Saibaman.

"Hiyaaa!" Chayote yelled out while charging out at the little alien bugger. The teen Saiyan swung her entire body around its axis to deliver her most crushing round-chop at the Saibaman's neck. In her head, she had already separated the bugger's head from its tiny shoulders with this powerful attack!

It felt like hitting a solid wall! Pain resonated throughout Chayote's entire body as her chop bounced off of what appeared such a soft and squishy body of this plant-soldier hybrid. Even her Saiyan armor could not protect Chayote from the pain of breaking her arm trying to hit this thing. This time with a bit more reserve behind her strike, the female Saiyan delivered a pair of elbow shots aimed right at the plant-hybrid's belfry before jumping up and throwing a wild kick that finally moved the soil-grown soldier back a few meters.

"Ki-ki-ki!" the Saibaman chuckled, laughing at the vain efforts of the Saiyan teen as it charged forward, delivering a slash of its claws that severed the girl's arm from the elbow down within a split-second. All of the half-assed moves that instructor Yuca taught her had left her mind at that moment. All she could do was to raise her arm up out of instinct and try to protect herself from instant death the best she could. It only worked for the first strike as without the protection of her now-removed arm, the sights in front of Chayote began moving rapidly, up and down before the sight of her own body twitching still on its feet greatly confused the beheaded Saiyan.

"Who's the pathetic, incompetent buffoon that tutored this trash?" Lord Frieza's infuriated voice, reached the muzzled and fading consciousness of the beheaded Saiyan teen.

The last sights that Chayote could comprehend before her death was a purple beam of light flying off somewhere toward the audience of Saiyans that had just observed the most pathetic fiasco in recent Saiyan history.


	2. Once or Twice in a Thousand Years

A line of ethereal, floating orbs with funny-looking comet tails that curled and coiled behind them greeted Chayote. Both the seemingly deceased Saiyan and her new company stood atop of a long, pearl-white road that appeared like the back of a dragon, below was nothing but an endless expanse of cotton-like yellow clouds. Chayote turned around in hectic succession. The teen looked down and patted down her own chest.

"I'm not like you guys…" she stated the obvious. It took a short while for the rambunctious Saiyan to notice a peculiar detail.

"Whaaa! Where's my armor?!" she yelled out making a handful of spirits flip out at her and start squirming about. Because of the sheer number of them, it was impossible to tell if they were speaking and, if so, what they were saying. "Oh well…" the female Saiyan got over the fact that she stood atop of a pearl dragon in a line of ectoplasmic blobs in nothing but the bodysuit she left her bed with.

"Hmmm, what's that?" Chayote exclaimed while leaning forward and placing her hand over her eyebrows to assist her vision. Farther in the distance, behind chunks of actual, white clouds, laid a building. It did not appear like any buildings Chayote had ever seen but it had a massive message written atop of its roof. A message which intrigued the Saiyan given how little she understood about her current situation.

"Calm down, it's where all of us are going! You've got nothing but time!" the little spirit in front of Chayote declared while the teen leaned over it with an imposing posture but pure and curious eyes.

"Oh yeah? Well what are you guys gonna do if I cut in the line?" she grinned with a very simian manner while prancing over, passing around, pushing over some unlucky spirits over by the handfuls on her gleeful journey to the odd-looking building with answers.

"WELLCOME?" Chayote read the message that she defied the rules of a line to get to read. "What an odd name for a building!" she pondered.

"Of course a measly mortal would defy the sacred rules of the Other World placed upon them by their superiors when given the first chance…" a rough, masculine voice reached Chayote's ears forcing the Saiyan to turn out of curiosity and the feeling of discomfort of being snuck up on. Behind her stood a tall and buff man of sophisticated clothes and a broad, elderly face. The fact that his clothes looked utterly useless for combat suggested that perhaps he was some sort of royalty. Then again, King Vegeta always wore his armor so maybe this midget was just an idiot?

"Other World? As if in Afterlife?" Chayote leaned over the shorty with a similar impolite manner that she spoke to the spirits with.

"Yes. It appears that you have indeed died. A fate that shall befall every mortal eventually. My name is Kibito. Follow me, please." The man recounted as if it was a meaningless poem he had learned solely for the sake of passing the teacher's test. The broad-shouldered and well-endowed in the chin department old-timer tread on forward inside the WELLCOME building. Stopping only in the doorway to observe how well Chayote could follow his rules.

To Kibito's great indifference, Chayote succeeded in the menial task of following him. The self-implied immortal looked like he was about to show pride in this mortal's ability to follow him but then he realized how pointless the task was and how pitiful the mortal was for being expected to struggle with something so trivial. It was safe to say Kibito did not like mortals all too much…

"So why would you choose to call yourself Kibito?" Chayote ran up to the side of the towering royalty and asked him without any scruples.

"I do not understand…" Kibito looked down at the irritating pest to his right as the two tread through the entrance to the main parts of the station which he was leading Chayote through.

"I mean I get it, calling yourself just by what you are is lame, I wouldn't like calling myself "Saiyan" either. But even God is better than Kibito." Chayote shrugged before wrapping her arms over her chest and pouting her face. The more she spoke the name, the lamer it seemed. Being smitten by someone named Kibito or having a guy named Kibito create the Universe just didn't sound right. What's more, God looked like shriveled, old prune…

"You misunderstand, Saiyan. I am not a God. I am an attendant. What makes you think that an actual God would bother themselves with the likes of you? The fact that I am here with you is already a disturbance to the natural order of things and the natural laws that have had this Check-In Station and, in fact, the Other World itself function for millions of years." Kibito answered with his eyes closed and looking more and more like he just did not want to look at the annoying Saiyan anymore and that was why he was resting his eyes.

"Well… Don't undersell it that much, Mr. Kibito." A tall, blue-skinned fellow in even weirder and less functional getup smiled at Chayote and the attendant. "This one's a bit more important than that."

"L-Lord Whis!" Kibito appeared completely taken aback by the presence of this tall yet frail, honestly, kind of queer-looking guy. Chayote's attention shifted from one figure to another and she could have sworn that someone like this attendant Kibito guy could have snapped a long weakling like this Lord Whis fellow like a twig.

Besides the remarkably fabulous Whis stood a bunch of red and blue equally frail-looking guys in similarly dysfunctional yet at least less flamboyant looking outfits. At least the red and blue folk had a pair of horns to each of them, suggesting that they could have at least rammed a guy pretty good.

"So… You're not supposed to be here…" Chayote began the chronicle of her first impressions pointing at Kibito. "And you're definitely not supposed to be here, right? How come both of you are here and what do I have to do with it?"

"Before we go through the arduous task of getting you up to speed, please, approach the table out in front." Whis gestured with his staff at a massive wooden structure behind him.

"Wow! That's a table!?" Chayote shrieked out in disbelief. What was even more unbelievable was the most metal-looking horned fellow sitting behind the table and observing the scene transpiring right in front of his own table.

"Indeed, behind it sits King Enma himself. He is the king of ogres who judges all those who are dead." Whis nodded, looking quite entertained by Chayote's all over the place impressions.

"What's the point, with this one it is just a formality, after all." King Enma gestured with his hand in boredom. "Both of you are here, aren't you? She's retained her body…"

"She may not be meant for Heaven. She may just be a very important and meaningful person…" Whis let his suggestion linger.

"Nope…" King Enma shook his head. "She's actually supposed to go to Heaven. Despite being a Saiyan, she didn't really have that much time to do any evil deeds yet. I'm sure she'd be a star resident of down below given a year or two of servitude…"

"I see…" Whis tapped the floor with his staff. Given the overall magical vibe of this otherworldly afterlife adventure, Chayote expected something magical to happen but it looked like the fabulous, pompadour blue-skin was just glad to hear this news. "In that case, I must disappoint you, Chayote the Saiyan. It appears that Heaven is not meant for you after all."

"Huh? But didn't that guy…" Chayote pointed at King Enma, almost instantly her hand got smacked by one of the corporate ogres while the second one corrected her.

"King Enma!" the red ogre insisted.

"Didn't King Enma say I am supposed to go to Heaven?" Chayote pouted with her hands crossed over her chest. She was not entirely sure what the Heaven was, but given the pleasant associations with the language she used it was supposed to be a quite nice place and conflict was within a Saiyan's very nature so it was not beneath Chayote to fight over things she did not truly know or need.

"If he was to sit you to a plane that heads to Heaven, if such a plane even still ran, you would only arrive at an empty void because, I am afraid, in one of his unfortunate caprices, Lord Beerus has destroyed it just before going to sleep. Heaven is quite important, unlike most things, the magic surrounding it is quite sophisticated and not something that mere time manipulation could reverse." Whis explained with a sad expression that, Chayote could swear, was acted out. "Because of his reckless actions, everyone residing in Heaven at the time was deleted from existence and Universe 7's mortal level has dipped to new lows having just lost its Heaven and if Lord Zen-Oh would notice how low it is, all of us would truly be deleted out of existence. Repairing Heaven is a bit of an arduous task, I am afraid. The Supreme Kai is also quite green, being only about 240 000 years old."

"Okay… So I guess Heaven's out of the picture. So what am I supposed to do for whole eternity?" Chayote sighed, she could already imagine the boredom of hanging around these office clerk types and fancy, aristocratic God-snobs.

"That is what I need to talk to you about. Normally, I would not need to be present in briefing up a mortal meant for Heaven. Mr. Kibito has been taking care of that duty for the last hundred years or so. I am here because of a very different sort of offer." Whis leaned over Chayote, teaching the Saiyan a lesson of how much it sucked being leaned in on by a much taller guy. The blue angel extended his staff and pointed it at the center of Chayote's chest.

"You are not an average Saiyan, Chayote. You are a once-in-a-thousand-years occurrence, a Saiyan with C-Type S-Cells. Having someone like you on the living side would greatly boost Universe 7's mortal level as a living being of high value is worth ten times that of a dead one. Reincarnating you would do no good either as you might just lose your special talent in the process of reincarnation.

"Oh… So if I'm alive, that will keep the entire universe from getting scrubbed?" Chayote counted the logic on her fingers as if it was 2nd-grade math.

"In a manner of speaking…" Whis smiled with delight gleaming from his body speech. "Although you misunderstand. It is not your own special genotype that is special. It is the fact that there is currently another mortal on Universe 7 with the same genotype."

"Huh!? I had a brother!?" Chayote shrieked out in disbelief.

"Oh, no!" Whis chuckled. "He is unrelated to you. However, the fact that there have been not one but two once-in-a-thousand years birth in Universe 7 does provide a nice bonus modifier to our mortal level."

"There is a problem though." Kibito cleared his throat. "If we resurrect Chayote back where she died, Frieza will just kill her again. Even if he does not, the average life expectancy of a Saiyan is not that long anyway."

"That is true." Whis pressed his hooked finger to his lip while he turned and twisted his pompadour deep in thought. "We do need Chayote around for a fifty to hundred years, just to be safe."

"Hmmm… Fortuneteller Baba is currently visiting looking for fighters to employ. You could just send this girl with the old hag." King Enma temporarily moved his eyes away from his massive books to involve himself in this matter being discussed by his superiors.

"Fortuneteller Baba… The psychic woman from Earth. That's great!" Whis jumped up and down in glee. "If we shelter you on Earth, there's no way Frieza will find you. That planet is far outside his sector of interest."

"Earth? Yes. This could work. The local wildlife and its inhabitants are weaklings. Chayote should be safe on that planet." Kibito nodded with a smirk.

"Wait, what? Weaklings? Forget about it, I'd rather go back to Planet Vegeta, can't you just bring me back again if I die?" Chayote shook her head with a childish and capricious expression.

"I'm afraid that would be dangerous." Whis' face turned serious for a moment. "This is not a game, Chayote, your spiritual alignment might be completely different the next time you die and if you are not meant for Heaven…"

King Enma lifted his eyes back up from his books to drag his thumb across his neck and point it down. The rest of the divine beings stood there trying to understand if the numbskulled Saiyan got the message.

"But won't the Universe get destroyed if you send me to Hell? What was that about rare blood and genes and my brother?" Chayote's face turned long and sour.

"He is not your brother, are you even registering anything we're telling you! It is of paramount importance, the fate of the entire Universe is on your shoulders!" Kibito flipped out, becoming the second person to lean over Chayote that day.

"You see, there are specific rules in how the afterlife works in all Universes. The specifics might be different, the types of Hell and Heaven and the such… But the overalls are the same. If I break those laws for a handful of points on the mortal level, those points would be nullified making trying to trick the system pointless." Whis postured. "Not to worry though, there would be few mortals on Earth capable of challenging your raw Saiyan power."

"You're saying there are actually worthy challengers!?" Chayote got all excited.

"I am beginning to think you are a very selective listener…" Whis lamented.

Chayote's face turned serious for a moment. She stepped up on her toes and glared right back at Whis' eyes. Given how scared everybody was of this blue rod of a person, he must have been pretty strong, but Chayote was not stepping up to his strength. She was about to challenge his planning.

"Yo, you do know what I'm gonna do when I go down there though, right?" Chayote muttered, she did not yell or thunder it out like she usually did in her utmost honesty. She spoke in a calm and reserved manner though everybody in the room could hear her. "I'm a Saiyan soldier, born and raised. You send me down to that planet, I'll wipe it clean and prepare it for sale when Lord Frieza eventually does land down there."

"Well…" Whis shrugged before slamming the bottom end of his staff at the ground. "Do what you will. The mortal levels of that planet are entirely unremarkable. I will not lie saying that we shall not feel the loss of that planet but, compared to the multiplier of two C-Type Saiyans existing simultaneously, those are acceptable losses. With this much death on your hands, however, Chayote, are you sure you want to find yourself standing right here, in front of King Enma, I wonder…"

"L-Lord W-Whis!" a croaky, feminine voice distracted Chayote from the serious moment she felt like she was having and the personal reflections that the moment invited from within her. A defining and blunt thud with a crunchy aftertaste followed the old hag's declaration of shock. "A-And you too…" Baba pointed at Kibito.

"Yeah… A real sit-on-a-sheet-of-sandpaper kind of workday." King Enma slammed his colossal fist against his table with a lofty sigh.

"It is very convenient that you have joined us, Ms…" Whis was about to finish that sentence while Fortuneteller Baba clung back onto her flying fortunetelling orb but then the old crone fell off once more, this time, however, she picked herself up with almost supernatural vigor and screamed out loud to deafen out the entire room.

"Speak my real name and I will slap you, won't care that you're the attendant of a God of Destruction!" Baba sunk the entire room in her dusty cacophony of drowning cats.

"Oh… Well… I do not have too much time to spend here. I am keeping Lord Beerus under a very tight leash for at least the next fifty years, if he wakes up while I am away, he might destroy something important again. Please handle this mortal's resurrection, Ms. Baba." Whis tapped the floor of the King Enma's palace with his staff only for a beam of light to envelop him and whizz him away to where Chayote could no longer as much as sniff him.

"Well, well… Your halo's gone…" King Enma grinned, looking somewhat glad that he was getting rid of a potential troublemaker Saiyan and relaying him to Earth. The final part may have seemed like a potential signal for worry but Enma must have been more of a short-term-thinking kind of guy as he looked more overjoyed than ominous.

"Huh? Halo!? My halo's gone! I had a halo? My halo's gone! Well, I guess it doesn't matter if I hadn't noticed it…" Chayote lost all sense of shit before erupting into laughter.

"If it is all the same, I would rather assist the Supreme Kai in repairing Heaven. My presence in the ritual might take away a good hundred and thirty years off of the process." Kibito bowed his head up to the chin in front of King Enma, more of solidarity than subordination as he outranked everyone else in the palace.

"Hey, wait!" Chayote turned back mid-way to Fortuneteller Baba's wheezing and hyperventilating presence. Kibito froze in mid-transportation, King Enma directed his attention to Chayote from his roof-reaching piles of files, even Fortuneteller Baba stopped fussing over having just met an angel and stared at Chayote in anticipation of the earth-shaking question the newly revived had to shoot.

"How come I resurrected with my slacks and not my Saiyan armor?" Chayote wondered, knocking everyone out flat.

"U-Unbelievable…" King Enma sighed. With these hopeless eyes, it felt like he could no longer muster the willpower to look at a file for a good hour to come.

"What an imbecile…" Kibito shook his head before being enveloped in a gleam of light similar to a localized star and once the light faded away, the attendant of the Supreme Kai had disappeared too.

"This way, child…" Fortuneteller Baba led Chayote by pressing her tiny hand against the girl's back.

"How did she resurrect in different clothes though?" a red ogre clerk asked the blue one, finding the strength in one of his arms to maintain the entire pile of paperwork while the other fixed his glasses.

"It is obvious, it was her head that regenerated the rest of the body, heads are fickle in what they remember, especially after an execution like that. It is not at all uncommon for beheaded people that keep their bodies to resurrect in their underwear." The blue know-it-all looked quite smug and excited about answering this question for his less experienced colleague.

King Enma shook his head without losing the attention of the files and the incoming flow of spirits that flooded his palace once the clog in the flawless machine cleared out.

"Welcome to Earth!" a tall, swampy-green, shriveled deity smiled to Chayote after the teenage Saiyan walked out from a beaming gate located entirely within one of the thousands of different doors littering the white corridor.

"Are you an attendant to some God too?" Chayote pointed her finger at the towering creep before Fortuneteller Baba smacked her hand for being rude.

"No, stupid, that's me. Mr. Popo." A short and plump, black as tar demigod declared while raising his hand up. "Kami is Earth's Guardian."

"Oh… That's good, 'cause I was beginning to feel like there're all too many Gods around the place. If everyone's a big, bad God and so self-important, us boring, little folk are in a whole lot of trouble trying to make up to all of them." Chayote shrugged after rolling her face to the side in self-reflection. While she tried to convince herself that nothing had changed, truthfully, she had just seen the answer to one of the most pressing questions of the Universe and that sort of experience changed people.

If Chayote had kept closer attention, perhaps she would have noticed the subtle smirk covering Kami's face. Then again, it was so easy to confuse it with the countless wrinkles of his old grape-like face.

"Well, I'm off, I've got business to run." Fortuneteller Baba cleared her throat. "Because of this freeloader, I failed to reel in a single fighter today…"

"Thank you, Baba, you do know how important this business is, right?" Kami left his eyes brimming with hope as he followed the psychic woman leave through the door to the left of the door she had entered alongside Chayote through without answering the question.

"So, what do you intend on doing with your second chance at life?" Kami turned to Chayote who was no longer where he had just seen her. It took a fair amount of time for the shock of having lost one of the two most important people to keep alive to sustain the existence of the entire universe to set in with the old Guardian.

With a hasty step, Kami had moved outside the endless corridors of his outlook and out from the shadows of his palace located atop of it and into the light. The teenage Saiyan was standing right in the middle of his round outlook and stared at the sky when Kami and Mr. Popo joined her.

"The sky's blue on this planet!" Chayote grinned with childish glee all the way from staring at the cerulean sky to turning to Kami who was doing his best to calm his old, racing heart.

"I would like to train you, Chayote. If you are to have another go at life, may as well polish your mind, body, and soul here and enjoy life to the fullest." Kami extended his hand for a shake.

"All this…" Chayote turned away and looked somewhere at the horizon which she could not see because of high up the Kami Outlook was. "I have lived my entire life as a soldier. Trained to eradicate life and prepare planets for conquest. Well… I was supposed to be trained that way but… Turns out I was not, not entirely. Now I don't know what I am or what I'm supposed to do. When I think about it, dying would have been easier."

"How unexpectedly deep. So what are you planning on doing? Just kill everybody in your sight until there is nothing left to oppose you or the other Saiyans once they find this planet?" Kami raised an eyebrow. His voice sounded grim, Chayote could identify a brewing conflict and in this state of confusion and stiffness, she would rather not have fought this planet's Guardian.

"Whis said something about there being creatures on this planet stronger than me currently. I will be fulfilling my purpose as a soldier, yes, but first I need to make sure that I do it in the right order. I will not be eradicating the life on this planet, not until I am sure that I can do it and that I deserve the mantle of a soldier I want to reclaim." Chayote declared while looking the Guardian way up in the eyes.

Kami closed his eyes and was in the process of contemplating something deep inside. Then, something snapped, all of a sudden, the shriveled green entity knew exactly what it wanted to do so it turned to walk away back into his palace.

"You should be famished. I do not eat at all and yet Mr. Popo feels obliged to make something delicious once in a while. I will bring you something fine he has made this morning." Kami spoke with a strict tone, his face only half-turned to Chayote as, for some reason, he could not bear looking her in the eyes.

"Great! I do feel a bit stiff after the whole death and rebirth deal!" Chayote raised her hands up with a hint of sluggishness plaguing them still. While Kami disappeared into the shadows of his temple, the teenage Saiyan approached the edge of the outlook to examine the seemingly impossible height that it was in. On Earth, it felt like she was experiencing everything around her for the first time…

A powerful thud and a throbbing pain in her buttocks were all that Chayote felt before the great plummeting down below. While the teenage Saiyan did her best to turn around and shake her fist at the sky temple she was cast out from, she could make out the black and almost a tad malicious figure of Mr. Popo with his leg half-raised, not at all ashamed of having kicked Chayote off the tower.

"What have you done, Mr. Popo?" Kami grunted with a jar of sake with the kanji of "Great Devil Seal" inscribed on it.

"This girl deserves neither your training nor your sacrifice." Mr. Popo looked down at where he had just kicked Chayote off to. His creepy smile was satisfied even more once he saw the tiny bling of light down at the bottom.


	3. Close Encounters of the Bargaining Kind

Chayote rubbed the back of her head. The stiffness that she still felt over her entire body did not help to fall down in a dignified way. Despite the big stumble from heaven transpiring just a handful of moments earlier, the Saiyan could not recall if she hit the ground with the front of back of her head. With a tremble in her knees, the teen rose on her feet and looked around.

The Saiyan was in a place surrounded by thick trees with a little creek running by her side, without a care in the world. Chayote had seen trees on Planet Vegeta before, she could comprehend the nature of these strange and tall plants despite not having had the chance to traverse the universe yet. Perhaps that could still be mended if she cleaned this planet nicely by the time Lord Frieza came down.

"As long as I do it in the right order, weakest to strongest, I should both eradicate all life on the planet and get stronger in the process…" Chayote pondered to herself. The thought of obliterating a Saibamen, no, whole four Saibamen all at once in front of Lord Frieza and the smile it would put on the emperor's face… She would still make her King proud. None of that Gods and angels and afterlife thing made any sense but the life of a soldier was still there for her.

The teenage Saiyan was so deep in her thoughts that she could not feel the ground rumbling from under her. It was only when something loud roared behind her that the Saiyan noticed the massive as it was thick, three-horned dinosaur behind her.

"You look strong… Wonder if I'm up on this level yet…" Chayote pondered. Without hesitation, she charged onward, determined to move the immovable beast. Her fist sent deafening shockwaves that bent the trees around the clashing pair. The tri-horned herbivore leaned its head down and blocked the Saiyan's fist with its forehead. Or so it thought before deep sleep claimed it.

"Hmmm… I see, so this Earth is a planet of these creatures. Strong, but nothing to worry about, just like Whis said." The Saiyan nodded to herself. "Look yummy too. A steak of this would quash the stiffness in my muscles right off."

"Whoa!" a voice behind her made Chayote turn around only to meet a handful of walking pigs, not too different from the massive dinosaur she had just slain. "You straight out iced this dino. Look at that, its brains are leaking from its ears, you must have crushed its skull…"

"You're like… Smaller… Dino… Was it?" Chayote tried putting the twos on top of twos as she pointed at the pig armed with a sword and its firearms totting pals. These creatures wore leather vests, jackets, and bandanas of different, intricate patterns. This was something – it was intelligent life that Chayote was having business with. Intelligent, yet clearly weaker than this dino thing, as emphasized by the puny muscle structure of these buffoons compared to the massive dino-creature.

"Whoa… Missy, not that I don't like the no-pants situation you have going on here but… If you would please surrender the gun you're packing that can kill these dinosaurs, we'll be on our way." The anthropomorphic pig with the scimitar stepped up closer to the Saiyan, even going as far as to extend its hand where Chayote was supposed to put said weapon when she chose to surrender it.

"Hmmm… I see…" Chayote leaned up to the blade of the man's sword. "A crude tool but I like it."

The rest of the hogs opened their jaws after they saw the teenage Saiyan outright blitz to them and examine the barrels of their guns from up close as if she experienced no fear at all.

"Hmph. These seem like primitive versions of the arm cannons from back home. Too primitive…" Chayote dismissed the apparently too uncivilized gun for her with a disapproving shake of her head.

"Hey, didn't you hear it, kid? Gimmie your gun, now!" the scimitar-wielding hog swung its scimitar, trying to intimidate the Saiyan girl. The blade of his sword separated a handful of Chayote's hair and touched her cheek but stopped there. The girl just smiled. It was like the sword moved at a turtle's pace as far as she was concerned.

"Gun? I don't have a gun. I came to Earth completely unarmed and half-naked. That leather jacket on you looks mighty fine. It'll serve me until I can find a proper local soldier uniform to wear, at least." Chayote spoke with glee as she pressed against the hog's shoulder, the sword-wielding bandit squeaked as he dropped his scimitar in fear of this young lady dashing about the place at speeds beyond that which his eye could comprehend.

"Th-Then h-how?" the pig-man croaked.

"How did I kill the dino?" Chayote completed the sentence. "Good, old this!" she raised her fist up making the pigs almost rip the clothes off of their bodies all at once and run away into the wilderness. The Saiyan leaned down to pick up a loose, brown shirt that one of the bandits left behind and adopt some of the fine leather wear of these bandits.

"I wonder what they needed that gun for? Maybe this place hosts a treasure worth stealing?" the Saiyan looked around. She decided to follow the creek back to the bottom of the tower she had just fallen off of. The sole star of this planet's system appeared to be positioned somewhere in the center of its rotation, dark would come before long.

Drawn to the ground by a sky-splitting kick that shattered its lower leg, the massive, two-legged dinosaur collapsed on the ground with its eyes rolled back and its tongue sticking out. A peculiar signal for a creature's demise that Chayote found to be all too common on this planet. She could not believe how much of a sweat she had worked up slaying these mighty-looking yet more bark than bite "dinos".

The teen extended her hand towards a pile of wood she had placed on the ground and focused her "inner strength" just like instructor Yuca used to show it to her. A poof of smoke burst forth from Chayote's hand, just like it always did when she tried blasting from her hand without the use of an arm cannon.

"Maybe I should have taken some of these primitive hand cannons with me after all. Perhaps they generate enough heat to light a fire…" Chayote sighed before turning at the mound of dead meat she had accumulated and dragged over to the fire. Her eyes turned to a rustling bunch of leaves. As if whoever stalked the Saiyan girl had realized it was found, he burst from the bush and ran forth at Chayote.

It was a peculiar little creature. Similar to a Saiyan yet lacking a tail. Short like a little pea but hair long enough to wear in a braid. Head adorned with a trophy of a kill this midget had earned – a fluffy, white and red thing that may have been a patch of something's skin. Chayote had noticed flocks of odd, pint-sized flying creatures with sharp beaks before, ones lacking aggression and too bothersome to chase around. Perhaps this dwarf had managed to catch and kill one of these things?

The little native boy ran up to Chayote's lousy camp and put a black stone to it, striking it with his other sharp stone that appeared to be even more primitive version of the blade that the Saiyan saw local bandits carrying. This one was not made from steel but from sharpened stone and minerals. Sparks spread from the white stone once the primal tool touched its edges, lighting the branches on fire.

"Why would you do that if you know I will kill you?" Chayote smiled at the boy as if she had not just threatened his life. The tiny thing took a pair of steps back in fear, it extended and clutched his knife at Chayote. "Although… Do you think you will grow stronger?"

"Y-Yes! I'll become tall and strong like my daddy!" the little one yelled out at Chayote, chest full of bravado that the Saiyan could appreciate.

"Great." Chayote extended her fist for a bump. "I'll kill you once you're large and strong so that killing you would hone my body more. The stronger creatures I kill, the more capable I'll be in serving my King when he picks me up from this rock."

"I… I helped you because I thought you were a nice person. You made all those bandits back there run away. Mean men just like them tread across these sacred grounds every day like they were looking for something!" the little boy yelled out. "You're… You're not nice like I thought. Nice people don't threaten to kill other people after just meeting them."

"Say, boy, I'll trade some of my dino meat for that black stone that sparks a fire." Chayote extended a thigh that was at least six times the size of the boy. It seemed like a waste but Chayote could eat that much when she was his size.

The boy sat up closer to Chayote and looked at her. "You should not be here either. If my dad sees you around here, he'll kill you too."

"I see. Your father is tall and strong, right?" Chayote rubbed her chin.

"The tallest and the strongest! Well… Maybe not as strong as the God that sits atop of the Korin Tower. My name's Upa, what is yours?" the tiny native wondered.

"Oh, so you've met Kami then? Your father is that strong, huh? I might need to eat up and regain my old strength before I eliminate him." Chayote pondered. "I'm Chayote."

"That's not nice! You shouldn't talk that way to people!" Upa yelled out while pointing his finger with an accusatory fashion at the female Saiyan.

"Oh? I see…" Chayote waved her hand in dismissal. "Say, what is this place anyway, why did those bandits back then wanted me to give them a powerful weapon and not money, food or gear?"

"How can you not know?" little Upa shrieked out. "This is the Sacred Land of Korin! The tower right there is the Korin Tower. What did God up above call it? How come he hasn't told you that?"

"I don't know, we didn't talk that much about that. He wanted to feed me, I think, but that bastard Mr. Popo kicked me down." Chayote turned grim for a moment, imagining the glee when she would eventually kill Mr. Popo and Kami. She would likely do them in last, they were the Guardian and the attendant of this planet, after all. It was more than likely that they were the strongest creatures around.

"So you were cast down from God's tower for being a real diva, it seems!" Upa smacked his little cheek with one hand and then pointed at Chayote in an accusatory manner. "How do you plan to get back on God's good side?"

"I don't care about Kami." Chayote dismissed Upa's question. "I need to rest a bit and regain my strength, retrain my body from this stiffness I feel. Then I will need to get to work."

"What do you mean?" Upa wondered.

"In a dozen years, I need to kill every single human alive for when the Saiyans find this planet so I can become Lord Frieza's soldier again." Chayote replied with a serious look on her face.

Upa cried and ran away for a decent distance before pulling out an arrow almost the size of his entire body and fired it from the tiniest bow. The arrow stuck a pair of millimeters of its tip into Chayote's head.

"You're a monster! That's why God of Korin Tower kicked you down!" Upa yelled out into Chayote's twitching head. The Saiyan reached for the arrow and removed it, given how it was flapping up and down already.

A massive man burst forth from over the pile of dead dinosaurs. In an impressive feat of acrobatics and skill, the man rolled forward and scooped up the little boy and then placed him atop his shoulder. The man then gave Chayote a dead-serious glare and then changed his eyes to beacons of softness once he turned to Upa.

"Upa, did this girl hurt you?" the native powerhouse spoke softly even though he possessed the proper vocal capabilities of a mighty warrior.

"Not really…" Upa admitted while scratching his head. "But she's a really terrible person! She said she wants to kill everybody in the world!"

"That so? As the protector of the Sacred Land of Korin, I cannot allow such a foul presence onto these grounds. Leave now or I will be forced to force you out." The tall man declared, blowing out his chest in a rather impressive display of strength. After a few moments of silence, interpreted as Chayote's defiance to the declaration of war from the protector of the Sacred Land of Korin, the man placed his son onto the ground and encouraged him to go hide while he himself removed the immense spear he wielded off of his back and pointed it at Chayote's direction.

"Out, now, I will not repeat it!" the native warrior growled with the full might of his voice now. Truth be told, Chayote somewhat liked him for all of his impressive display of might and his voice that could change from being soft to mighty in a brink of a moment.

"Well… Perhaps a proper stretch of this tired body is in order." Chayote shrugged before taking a pair of mocking hops and cracking her knuckles about.

"I will not let you besmirch these hallowed grounds!" the man declared while charging madly at Chayote. With near effortless grace, the teenage Saiyan evaded every spear strike. Truthfully, she could have punched a hole through the buff chest of this massive man already, however, mere murder was not the proper purpose of this battle, it was to stretch her body out.

"Arrogant!" the native warrior taunted the teen Saiyan while he swept the other end of his spear but Chayote hopped over the sweep with grace that almost mocked the warrior's effort.

"Be careful, father! This girl has been trained by the God of Korin Tower!" Upa yelled out.

"W-What!?" Chayote's opponent turned back to his son with a perplexed face that burst forth with sweat. The grim war-paint on the man's body and face became muddy and chaotic, sending streaks over the face of Upa's father. When the noble spearman turned back at his opponent, still quivering with disbelief, he found Chayote standing up in his face with her fist frozen just a centimeter from his face.

"Don't drop your guard…" Chayote taunted her opponent while the man broke his fighting stance and bowed his body up to his waist.

"Huh?" Chayote wondered.

"Please forgive me for attacking you. It was foolish of me to question God's plan!" the man apologized while bowing. "Please join me and my son for dinner tonight. You don't appear to have a place to sleep."

"I mean… If you're insisting, I guess I am going to need a place to rest in while I cleanse this planet. If you would be willing to host me, I guess we could have a deal that I would kill you two next to last." Chayote shrugged, ready to follow the native man and his son to the ends of the Earth if need be.

"My name is Bora. I believe you have met my son Upa already. Please, our home is this way, right at the bottom of the tower. This place is a frequent crash zone of aircraft. I believe that the top of the tower is large and round, which is why aircraft crashes so far from the bottom of the tower in a ring pattern." Bora nodded. He did not look at all pleased by Chayote's words but he let the girl follow him and his son all the way to his tent.

The teen Saiyan appreciated the hospitality of this Earthling. He looked the most powerful of all earthly creatures she had met so far, he might just be a worthy ally in her training, serving as her landlord of sorts… Yes. A landlord who provided food and shelter for the duration, all the way until the Saiyans or Lord Frieza took her back in.

"You are quite fast but are you sure that you have been trained by God himself?" Bora wondered, digging into a thigh of the deceased dinosaur. Chayote was okay with providing meat for the bunch while she herself dug into the cooking animal that Bora had slain. It was a peaceful exchange, a ritual of a mutual promise of not murdering each other. It was a useful Earthling ritual, perhaps the Saiyans could adopt it in certain situations. The only time Saiyans exchanged food was during the mating rituals...

Chayote was 78% sure that Bora was not attempting to court her.

"Not yet. I did not have the chance to train with God, I've met your God and the God of your God… Then some blue-skinned guy who's the boss of all sorts of Gods of other Gods." Chayote replied. "Why?"

"Your speed was incredible. You are a true prodigy of power and swiftness but your moves were sloppy. You could have avoided my attacks without a hitch but your lousy moves let me cut your legs." Bora noted with a cocky smile while he pointed at Chayote's torn leather pants she had taken off of one of the hog bandits.

"Oh…" it was only now that Chayote noticed that her leather pants were a mess. Not only were they stringy and uncomfortable, but they were now also covered with rips and holes. A few tiny cuts on her legs ached a little bit too.

"Upa, bring our guest a new pair of pants." Bora tapped the back of his son. The hand of the native warrior looked colossal enough to scoop the little booger up like shovel scooped sand.

"But the only pants her size would be my ritual clothes from when I finally become a warrior!" Upa pouted, puffing out his tiny cheeks. He then showed Chayote his tongue in a rather rude manner.

"You were supposed to sew those clothes all by yourself anyway. Plus, do you really think a true warrior would hog their trousers all to themselves like this?" Bora smiled.

"Okay…" Upa stood up and dragged his feet over to the tent. The little boy flipped over inside a large chest laying beside his sleeping plaid and searched for the pair of ritual warrior pants for his guest.

"You must be confused why I halted our battle back then?" Bora raised an eyebrow.

"It was because you realized how futile it was and how easy it would be for me to kill you." Chayote stated.

"I was going to say, it was because the God of the Korin Tower does not make mistakes. I have faith in whatever God saw inside you. You may speak like the devil and only wish darkness for the future, but I believe that you are meant for better things." Bora explained. The struggle against laughter after the man's words served as a nice time filler before Upa returned with the trousers. Much to the embarrassment of both the young and upcoming as well as the mighty and seasoned native warriors, the teen Saiyan felt obliged to change right in front of them and the fire.

"These are great. I appreciate you lending me the proper warrior attire of this planet." Chayote jumped about, beaming with excitement. She may not have had her Saiyan armor and gear with her but she had the next best thing. She almost felt a little bit humbled by just being given the proper warrior attire of this planet but then again, she did just prove her superiority against this planet's mightiest. Bora must have been the mightiest, he was quite proficient, after all, and Whis did state that this planet would be relatively safe for Chayote because of how weak its inhabitants were.

"Have you considered something, Chayote? A suggestion if you will?" Bora's face turned grim and serious as he brought this up. Chayote raised her ecstatic smile up to face the seasoned warrior. "You speak about killing every person on this planet eventually. Do you feel like maybe you could pick and choose who it is that you realize this goal of yours on?"

"Hmmm? What a stupid question, of course, I haven't killed you and I pushed back killing Kami and that asshole Mr. Popo until the very last. Might even blow that green guy's brains out in front of my rescuing party!" Chayote gave the two natives a "peace" gesture with her two extended fingers.

"Then, perhaps, you kill all the evil creatures on this planet first? Perhaps the reason why the God of the tower took you in was to make you the person that enacted his vengeance?" Bora wondered. "I am confused as to why else would the God bother with one as wicked inside as you…"

"Kill all the evil people? That would be pretty hard…" Chayote pondered on it hard with her finger almost rubbing out a wound on her lips and her forehead starting to hurt after a while of such intense concentration. "I mean how do I even know who exactly is evil or not?"

"I and Upa could show you. I may have blood on my hands, my own view might be tainted, but Upa here is the purest soul I have ever met. If you hung around him for a couple of days, he'd tip you on the nature of evil." Bora smiled. He evidently did not expect Chayote to be quite this malleable.

"Well, I suppose if I'm killing everybody anyway… May as well start from the bad guys. Seriously though? You would do that for me?" Chayote wondered with almost a bit of disbelief in her glare as she faced Upa who was truly beginning to seem confused by what was going on and how someone he was afraid would spell out the doom for mankind was almost now ready to slay all evil.

"Y-Yes!" Upa yelled out with his two little hands clutched together as he jumped up on his tiny feet, overjoyed with the face turn of this newly met girl.

"Okay, because you gave me these cool native warrior pants, I will honor your request and kill all the evil people first." Chayote nodded before returning to her food. The ecstasy of wearing the bottom wear of a true Earthling warrior was now far behind her spontaneously combusting and extinguishing mind.

Chayote slept too peacefully that night to notice the night of a crescent moon over her head.


	4. World's Greatest Assassin and Cheese

A man past his physical prime in terms of his age stared through the window of an airship as he flew over a green forest massive. His eyes were awfully squinty, both because of his natural features as well as the intense concentration on his destination and the path that led there, one that the man chose to distract himself with. The distraction was a necessary respite from all the pent up anger that he was fostering in his chest.

"Make fun of my hair, will you?!" the man piloting the airship yelled out having lost his temper once more, just like he had in the bar. What a waste of time and effort that was… Killing two drunks was so beneath him anyway, even if he had decided to sully the hands of the world's greatest assassin, such meaningless endeavor would have required awesome compensation, a hundred million Zeni for each, at the very least.

The man donning a pink chang pao with an embroidered "Kill" kanji on his back leaned even closer to the front illuminator of his airship and directed his beady eyes at the landmark of the Korin Tower that he always had to pass when he chose to head to the Red Ribbon Base from the north-eastern direction. It was a troublesome flight path, though hilarious also in its own way.

It was an official flight path and the only way of getting to the Red Ribbon Headquarters through the official flight paths from the north-east. The Korin Tower was also an infamous location for how many airships and other aircraft have gone missing. Those few that have made it out from the Sacred Land of Korin reported their aircraft simply stopping functioning when they went high up. Without a doubt, it was a conscious way of remaining unseen by the Red Ribbon as any effort of reaching them from the unofficial flight paths would have not only registered on their radars as suspicious but it would have also been interpreted as equally suspicious by the authorities of West City.

Thinking about this made the pointed-nose-man strike a small grin, one that twisted his thin mustache sideways. He could have used something soothing like a good old smile. Maybe he should have gone up through the clouds, taken in the scenery of the sunset as well…

The airship spiraled upward, bursting through the clouds and enjoying the gentle embrace of ample sunlight. The man with overly expressive and pompous long coat straightened the nose of his aircraft only to meet a blank stare of a black-skinned creature with luscious, red lips and jewelry all over his body. This was no man, as someone seldom employed by the Red Ribbon Army, the assassin had seen his own fair share of the features of darker skinned men, with one of the top figures of the corps being Staff Officer Black.

What seemed even odder, the creature was floating atop of what looked like an eastern carpet, one that effortlessly kept up the pace with the aircraft. The killer was so entranced and confused by the man that he did not even register the blitzing assault, in a single motion, the carpet closed up to the aircraft and the black, genie-like chubby sent the aircraft shooting down with a mere push kick.

The pilot kept yanking on his controls, began rapidly going through the various buttons with little to no effect as the functionality of the entire aircraft seemed as good as dead. Nerves got the better of the spiraling down assassin as one of these pulls left the control stick firmly gripped in his hands, shooting out sparks and detached from the entirety of the control scheme of the aircraft.

"This is the last time I fly a plane over this cursed place!" the man yelled out from the bottom of his lungs.

Chayote screamed out from the deepest parts of her chest while delivering a deadly kick to the side of the head of the giant dinosaur. These last few days fighting bandits, dinosaurs and sabretooth tigers was all that the Saiyan was doing. Even strike delivered made her feel more in control over her body. At the current moment, she actually felt like every measly scuffle that barely lasted one or two exchanges even improved her a bit. Chayote was no longer catching up, she was now slowly treading ahead.

"No, no, no!" Upa shook his head with irritation in his tone. "The dinosaur was not evil."

"But it tried eating us. You said that if somebody is trying to kill us, chances are they're definitely evil." Chayote pointed out. She could distinctly recall Upa telling her that a day or two ago. It was easy to remember because she was doing one-handed upside push-ups. It was really hard at first so Upa motivated Chayote to be better by putting a chunk of poop to her face so that she could not fall without falling into the poop.

The little rascal did not remove it either, Chayote spent all that time doing push-ups until the dung beetles carried it off and the rain washed off what remained. Sometimes the Saiyan wanted that Yuca was as strict on her as Upa was…

"Yeah, it tried eating us because it eats meat! It's a predator so killing is what it does. That doesn't make it evil!" Upa disciplined a girl two times his size, attempting to reach her nose with his extended index finger but failing miserably.

"So then I can't be evil, nor can the other Saiyans. Fighting and conquering planets is what we do too…" Chayote wiped the sweat off of her face and sat down. She gave Upa a serious look that told the kid that she expected a reasoned response because it was something that troubled her a bit.

"Well… No!" Upa insisted with impressive vigor although he could not base his judgment in any deeper argumentation. "You see… You choose to do all those things. You would not die if you did not do that as the dinosaur would."

"But Yuca didn't take me on missions and didn't toughen me up and then I did die… And I went on to Heaven." Chayote pointed out. "This good and evil thing's really confusing…"

Lamenting the difficult mental gymnastics that she signed herself up for, Chayote sat down on a downed stump that she herself left after helping Bora out with some firewood. At the time she was not sure how much wood was needed for a mere fire nor was she aware how respected the trees in these woods were.

"Yo!" a man walked out from the forest and into the clearing. One wearing a white and torn karate gi, a red headband that restrained a headful of ginger hair and one with impressive tonus to his muscles as well as a rather remarkable line of facial hair shaking on his upper lip while the man spoke.

"Oh, another bandit, I'll kill him and be with you in a second…" Chayote sighed before standing up and stretching out a bit. She had to hand it, she was getting hungry after fighting all those weaklings. It didn't seem like she's moved one inch in her quest of wiping the planet out of all life, not even on her subquest of wiping it out of all evil people. She's killed a fair share of bandits but… It sort of seemed like evil in rich supply, or so Upa suggested her by pointing out new and new characteristics of evil people and new bandits made their way to the Sacred Land of Korin.

In a way it was quite convenient – evil people were making their way to Chayote and not the other way around.

"No, wait, I don't think he's a bandit." Upa jumped up from checking on some daisies and ran up to the man. "What's your business in the Sacred Land of Korin!?" he yelled out. Compared to how the little shrimp was before Chayote met him, it seemed like meeting Chayote has made him quite bold.

"I am a traveling karateka, Gorgonzola's the name." the man pointed at himself with his thumb with a fair amount of confidence. Chayote had to admit that not only something about his name felt sating, but she also found the confidence as well as the physical bulk of the man invigorating.

"Karateka, what's that?" Chayote wondered.

"He's a martial artist. It means he's specializing in Karate." Upa pointed at the man with his index finger, it looked like it infuriated Gorgonzola a fair bit as he shoveled the boy aside with a push of his right hand.

"Martial arts?" Chayote looked baffled by the term.

"You're kidding, right? You're an avid fighter!" Upa yelled out, angered by the man's impudence in brushing him aside like that.

"Oh? An avid fighter? I am traveling across the world in search of a challenge. In the last World's Martial Arts Tournament I won a fight in the preliminary rounds. I have come to the Sacred Land of Korin to face the mystical force that's been killing people passing through these parts and destroying aircraft… Where are you going?" Gorgonzola looked into his own story before Chayote began just walking away.

"Oh, I'm hungry, gonna eat this dinosaur." Chayote pointed at the downed monster.

"Oh… Well… There's no need to eat this road kill. Fighting in the World's Martial Arts Tournament has given me perspective. Fighting can be a lifestyle all by itself. If you're such an avid fighter, perhaps we should fight for money then? Do you know what money is, girl?" Gorgonzola smiled smugly while he leaned his chin forward as if begging to be punched in it.

"Sure. I've looted plenty of this money from the bandits I've killed…" Chayote revealed two handfuls of Zeni bills that fanned out quite nicely. "Not sure what's it used for but if you're willing to fight me for it, go for it."

"Heh, heh, heh…" Gorgonzola chuckled to himself while revealing a much smaller stack of cash of his own and tossing it on the ground. Chayote followed up, careless about the money she had, she threw it all despite possessing possibly a dozen times more than the traveling karateka bet.

"Are you sure about this, Chayote? He clearly means to take advantage of the fact that you don't know martial arts…" Upa wondered, looking at his companion. "He's a fraud, you see, a bad man."

"Oh, that means I can kill him, right?" Chayote jumped up in her own personal Eureka moment.

"Eh… I don't know, he's sort of a buffoon so it feels kind of bad but…" Upa shrugged. The boy looked worked up over it.

Gorgonzola took a spread out, wide guard position and twisted his rich, fiery mustache in a confident grin. Judging from his expression, all the talk of murder terrified him at the start, but the concept of fighting a weakling little girl who did not even know what martial arts were and looked desperate enough to eat a carcass of the dead dinosaur she came upon for this much money reassured him somewhat. He survived a whole preliminary round in the World Martial Arts Tournament. A good sixteen more and he may have qualified for the finals even…

"Aren't you going to take your stance, girly?" Gorgonzola taunted his opponent while Chayote stared at him with a blank face.

"Huh? No need, see, I killed that dinosaur just fine without one…" Chayote pointed at the dead titan.

For a blink or two, Gorgonzola appeared to be digesting what the teenage Saiyan told him with a hint of hilarity but then something shattered in his head and his eyes shot out wide in utter shock while his jaw dropped down. His blazing mustache curled and rose up from the tension of his skin.

"W-Wait… What did you say? D-Did you say you… Killed… That…" Gorgonzola tried to obtain the necessary testicular fortitude to bail out on this catastrophe that may have very well taken his life far too early.

Before Chayote could answer, an airship crashed right in front of her and on top of the sweating martial artist looking for a quick and ample buck. Whether it was through the fame of surviving the terror of the Sacred Land of Korin's monstrous guardians or conning a handful of ambitious teens, Gorgonzola was the last one to enter a fair and challenging fight and the first one to leave a situation when it got hot. May he forever be remembered thusly…

Much to Upa's horror and surprise, an actual man walked out from the rubble of the crashed aircraft. One with a torn eastern long coat and ample dirt, fuel and shallow cuts all over his body. The survivor of the crash that claimed Gorgonzola's life looked around and took note of the little native boy and the confused Saiyan teen.

"Aloha!" he exclaimed while making a hilarious facial expression, rounding up and squinting his already thin eyes and putting a twisted smile on his face.

"I guess that means I won…" Chayote crossed her hands over her chest with dissatisfaction in the anti-climactic fight appearing crystal clear on her face. "Feels kind of a rip-off…"

"But you won the fight money, how is this a rip-off?" Upa looked at Chayote.

"Yeah, but there wasn't much of a fight. A good fight is its own reward…" the Saiyan sighed.

"Oh… There was fighting afoot?" the survivor of the crash-landing looked around, failing to see anything but the destruction his own landing had caused. The man's eyes rested upon a notable size of money that, given the pricing of the assassin, was pocket money at best, however, in his current predicament it looked fairly pleasing.

"Tell you what, as an apology for killing your opponent, ironically enough, without trying, I, the world's greatest assassin, Taopaipai shall fight you in his stead?" the assassin looked at Chayote with a smug stare. It was self-evident that he was looking down upon the low-level of competition that could have been competing for this miserable pile of cash in the first place. Any self-respecting martial artist would have evaluated his participation with half a million Zeni at the very least.

"Are you strong?" Chayote wondered. "Well, it doesn't matter. I'll take anyone on at this point, but you're sure you don't want to rest up before we go? You don't look too good."

"Trust me, brat, for this amount of money, I'll kill you in one second. I have places to be, after all." Taopaipai chuckled while stroking his mustache. The high opinion of his own strength somewhat entertained Chayote. She was willing to fight this torn up and bruised man all of a sudden, as long as he wouldn't whine about it not being fair later.

"See? See how evil you sound when you go around telling people you'll kill them?" Upa pointed at Taopaipai with an angry stare while his focus shifted from Chayote to Taopaipai.

"Oh… He's evil then? So it's okay if I kill him, right?" Chayote looked at Upa with eyes wide in both confusion and excitement for the upcoming brawl.

"You… Kill me? Why you… Dodonpa!" Taopaipai yelled out while flicking his index finger forward and firing off a superheated beam of energy from it. Chayote yelled out in pain as the beam hit her square in the chest and sent her flying back, the beam burnt right through the lousy leather clothes that Chayote had looted off of the bandits but failed to penetrate the teen Saiyan herself.

Upa yelled out in disbelief and ran up to the fallen Saiyan. Before he could cry out for his newly met friend to wake up, Chayote coughed and sat up on her own. Her face twisted in pain and still trying to overcome the painful aftereffects of the intense beam of energy hitting her right where her heart was.

"Wh-What!?" Taopaipai dropped his jaw in disbelief. "You… Survived the Dodonpa!?"

"Heh…" Chayote wiped a bit of blood that she coughed up from inside with her fist. "So you can shoot beams from your hands without an arm-cannon to channel your energy? That's what I'm trying to learn too. How about you teach me that and, in return, I'll kill you last of all the evil people?"

"Y-You impudent brat! You've made me waste far too much effort for your miserable life!" Taopaipai lost his composure and moved his hands by his side. The assassin-for-hire dashed onward with a single leap. Chayote's upwards kick caught the assassin unprepared and sent him flying. Before he could fly too high up, Chayote pursued her new toy and slammed him square in the head with a double ax handle strike. Before the crashing assassin could finish his landing, Chayote dashed up to his falling body and kicked him once more, redirecting his flight to a horizontal crash into a nearby stone.

"You're really strong, actually. I very nearly missed the timing on that one." Chayote grinned at her crashed opponent. She very much enjoyed this little game, it was only now that all of the talking that her peers used to do back on Planet Vegeta of epic, glorious battles began making sense. And the best part was – this battle was just getting started!

"You dare to mock me!?" Taopaipai burst from the stone with his long coat completely torn off of his body, dashing at Chayote once again. The Saiyan raised her hands up for a block but the sudden strike from her opponent came to the girl's gut and made her body lift off the ground from the sheer intensity of the opening strike.

The assassin continued his combination with a knee strike right to Chayote's dazed face. Something felt off about this guy's attacks. It was like every attack completely locked Chayote's body up, just like the post-mortem stiffness from before used to make the Saiyan's body feel all weird. Another punch came to Chayote's stomach, this one felt more akin to what the warrior teen was used to punches feeling like but it felt… Stronger. Stronger than what this man should have been capable of. As if the previous precision strikes had weakened her body somehow while locking it up at the same time.

Chayote's dazed eyes could not follow the successive attacks of Tao's finger strike flurry. Of all the attacks that the assassin threw her way, these felt by far the worst. It was more of those nasty, locking up strikes but they came so fast one after another that the sensation of creeping death became apparent and overwhelming. As if mocking the Saiyan, Taopaipai kicked her diagonally up in the sky and then double ax handle slammed her back down, similarly to how Chayote did before.

"Now, die!" Taopaipai taunted his opponent by finishing the attack with a knee landing upon the downed Saiyan teen's neck. Chayote cried out in pain while the damaged throat cracked and turned at an awkward angle. With a graceful backflip, Taopaipai landed on his two feet and flicked his head to the side to allow his long braid to fall on his shoulder with great skill and elegance.

"Chayote!" Upa cried out, dashing to the defeated Saiyan. The girl's eyes were staring off into the distance with a blank and lifeless look. Her head still remained diagonally tilted due to the awkward angle of her neck.

"Don't bother wasting your tears, she's dead." Taopaipai huffed for a short while before his breath returned to him. He had not been expecting this much of a challenge for this irrelevant of a monetary gain. "Normally, I'd grace you with letting you join her in hell but… I've killed far too many people for free today. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth."

Taopaipai approached a nearby oak, one of the millions of firm trees protecting the Sacred Land of Korin and pinched it a little with his foot and then pinching it once more with a precise and lightning-swift finger strike at the top to finish forming a mighty log pillar. Taopaipai extended his foot to allow the log to rest on it, with a single flick of his leg, the assassin sent the wooden pillar flying while he dashed after it himself. Upa did not see if the mighty assassin found his new and improvised aircraft or if he crashed and burned as he deserved.

"Get up!" Upa cried out. Confused by the handful of all sorts of feelings passing through his tiny heart, the native boy kicked Chayote's body a pair of times before leaning over her face and screaming out. "Get up! What was all that mighty talk about killing everybody!? You can't just flip over and die!"

Upa yelled out in pain after a mighty headbutt. The Saiyan girl sat back up, just like she did before except this time massaging her neck. It appeared that the assassin mightily exaggerated the report over the Saiyan's death, having managed to only shortly knock her unconscious.

"Whooo! You sure pack a wallop!" the Saiyan yelled out in utter ecstasy before noticing that her new best friend had already packed his things and took off with her fight money. "W-Where did he go?"

Chayote looked around in confusion, still feeling a bit sore in the neck after Upa jumped back up on his feet and jumped up on her for a hug. He was not the only one about to burst in tears. The loss of fight money was irrelevant, Chayote was not entirely sure what the currency was used for on this planet anyway, the strongest opponent she had ever met, however, a slight weakling compared to Chayote's power and speed but a vast superior in terms of fighting skill, was something to shed tears about.


	5. Up and Up the Tower We Go

"Really? Chayote was beaten?" Bora looked in surprise. The story that Upa and Chayote had to tell made the native protector of the Sacred Land of Korin lower his massive arm that clutched a dinosaur's thigh. Over the short period of time that the Saiyan had taken residence in their tent, the father and son had gotten used to dinosaur diet.

"Not really… She just didn't win." Upa shrugged. Usually, a single chunk of meat was enough to fill the youth up. "He was a really frightening man! If he ever returns, I'm scared about even thinking about what he might do."

"I know, right? I can't wait to fight him again!" Chayote shrieked out in glee. "This goes beyond just good and evil. The thought of killing him just feels so… Sunny."

"You scared me back there…" Upa put down a wooden cup after downing all of the tea inside it. He looked at Chayote with whimpering eyes. "Three times I thought I lost you."

"Huh? You mean when he attacked me with his energy beam? Then his sweet flurry of attacks at the end… Wait…" Chayote tried counting on her fingers, even if the task demanded much fewer fingers than she had on one hand, she still failed to do the count right.

"When you asked him to teach you!" Upa yelled out. "I was worried that you'd join with him and do something horrible!"

"You asked that man to teach you?" Bora looked at Chayote. At that moment even the sturdy believer in God's judgment began doubting his unwavering faith.

"He knew how to fire his energy. I thought he could show me how. I don't get why he wouldn't. It makes for a much more entertaining fight when your opponent is the best they can be." Chayote shrugged.

"You just don't get it!" Upa yelled out, the kid ran up to the Saiyan and stepped on top of a pile of unused logs that were to be burnt to keep the fire going through the night. "That man wasn't like you, Chayote, he was really evil. He didn't like fighting, he only kills people for the money, just like the bandits that come here every day."

Chayote looked down as if Upa's words had just revealed something frightening to her. For a blink, the teen looked like her entire life had run through her eyes as if the very foundation of her beliefs was shaken. The Saiyan looked back up at the dull, black points where Upa's lacking features eyes were.

"Wait… You mean Taopaipai doesn't like fighting?" she uttered.

"The outside men are different from us. They are most certainly different from you," Bora spoke with a firm yet soothing voice. "Perhaps it was wrong for you to land here. These lands are a poor reflection on the rest of the world. The outside man shackles himself with money, the same money you've been stacking up and lost to Taopaipai. If this Taopaipai took your money, that means he sees fighting as his job, not his passion."

"That bastard…" Chayote's face turned sour. "Now I have to kill him for sure. Where did you say he went?"

Upa shook his head. "Wait, you shouldn't chase after him. He knows martial arts, he can fire his energy from his fingers. This is your chance to train. I believe you've said you're stronger than him and that might be. If you weren't, you would have never survived that beating he gave you. But if you want to defeat him, and the other evil men, you need to learn actual martial arts."

"Hmmm… You kept talking about that martial arts thing…" Chayote hummed and lingered on the concept, desperate to understand what it may have been solely from the wording but its meaning still eluded her.

"You will love it." Bora smiled. "It is an art entirely dedicating to being more efficient in combat."

A flock of birds took off, frightened by a wild shriek of an overly excited teenager. A shriek that continued for miles and miles on end before it frightened a pair of pterodactyls resting atop of a small rocky pillar as well. Nobody around wanted anything to do with the source of that hungry for action and comprised of pure passion shriek.

"Do you know it!?" Chayote jumped on her feet, shaking her fists up and down as if hurrying the native warrior to answer her question or else she would shed her fleshy core from her lazy and static skin.

"I know a fair bit of what my father passed down to me, but it relates to spear-fighting, archery and the like." Bora shrugged. He raised his finger up at where the summit of the Korin Tower was, still invisible through the pitch-black clouds. "The God on the top of the Korin Tower, however… Legends say that he is the greatest martial artist in the entire world. He loves martial arts so much that he only allows those with tempered bodies anywhere near his tower. Unless you use your own body strength to climb the Korin Tower you will just be cast down."

"Chayote, didn't Taopaipai crash in that steel bird that the outside men use?" Upa looked up at Chayote.

"Yeah, when I dropped down from the Korin Tower, I figured that there may have been no way that your planet has discovered space travel. Seeing that aircraft, however…" Chayote looked up and to the east. "I will need to see the rest of the world. There may just be a way for me to take off to space from this rock after all."

"W-Wait, take off?" Upa ran up to Chayote and pulled on her trousers. "Why would you leave?"

"You don't get it, do you? I can kill everyone on this planet but who knows how long it will take for the Frieza Army to find me. Whis was fairly confident that our paths would never cross so I've been figuring it out for a fair while – I might need to fly off by myself in search for Lord Frieza's territories in the outer space. Oh well…" Chayote shrugged. "Unless I can find a decent spaceship on this rock, it isn't like it even matters…"

Bora and Upa stared at Chayote with confused stares. They did not know exactly what their recently met acquaintance was talking about but their guts suggested that it was more pondering on the darkness she remained lost in. It was like no matter how hard the two tried to subtly nudge her in the right direction, the direction passed down to them by the God of the Korin Tower to the ancestors of the guardian tribe, it all remained for naught and this confused teen willingly remained submerged in the choking swamp of corruption.

"Well, if it will ease your mind, I can show you some moves with the spear. It will soon be about time that Upa makes his own spear from stone and wood, I'd be honored to have you walk alongside him and nudge him in the right direction if needed." Bora smiled at the Saiyan, handing her a sharpened stick.

"A spear, huh?" Chayote scanned Bora's weapon of choice before jumping up and hurrying to her treasure chest. "I know I have one of those somewhere…"

Over the time she had spent hanging around the natives of the Sacred Land of Korin, Chayote had accumulated an impressive array of trinkets from the outside, eastern world as well as its weaponry. She had some of those weird and useless, steel arm cannons that fit entirely in her hand, she had swords and other weapons she could barely identify or understand the point of. It did not take her long to pull out a spear out of her loot crate.

"Well…" Bora examined the weapon with his eyes. "It's a spear alright but… It won't last too long in your hands. The outside man has a nasty habit of crafting weapons and tools on a belt of some sorts, producing it for someone else but themselves for an exchange of money. A weapon forged like that cannot last."

"Whatever, it's just for now, until I can climb back up and convince Kami to train me in those martial arts." Chayote grinned while mirroring the stance she saw Bora take during his morning workouts. She would not be picking the art of spear-fighting completely blind, she had observed the native warrior long and hard. After all, he showed off some of the best that the Earth had to offer and was the closest to skilled fighting that Chayote had seen on Earth up until she met Taopaipai.

"I see… In that case… Let's see what you can do." Bora nodded and turned serious. Upa wrapped his tiny arms over his bent knees and settled down to watch his father and Chayote train. He had dreamed to become tall and strong enough for his father to train him but that time had not yet come. Regardless, the shrimp looked more than happy to live out his dreams through Chayote until he himself came of age.

* * *

Initially, Chayote used to count the thrusts she had performed, the number of moves with the spear she had picked up on by just getting floored again and again by Bora. It proved to a fruitless endeavor not even one-tenth of her training in. The Saiyan trained hard and long, refusing to roam the Sacred Lands and pick on bandits anymore, exchanging the pleasure of freedom and roaming for strenuous and lengthy training. She had counted for Taopaipai to soar through these parts one of these days but nothing of the sort had happened. The more Chayote looked at the sky with her spear in hand during every tiny break she had, the more her frustration of the assassin's absence annoyed her.

Chayote managed to learn a thing or two by the time that she had gotten frustrated with the tremendous spike of training required for her current level of skill to progress. Her devotion was by no means fruitless. Bora even allowed her to don her face with war-paint although he only allowed her to draw circular shapes instead of the badass, sharper lines he himself donned.

This painting of one's own body appeared to be the way in which the local warriors displayed the lessons they have learned. It was similar to badges and medals that some of the Frieza Army warriors wore on their chests. Chayote could recall seeing some of the gold-emblem donning folk amongst the usual chaff back when Lord Frieza came to visit Planet Vegeta.

Recovering from Taopaipai's beatdown, part of which Chayote permitted, just for the sake of fun, took far less than the initial recovery after the post-resurrection stiffness. Scaling the rocky mountains in search of the hawk feathers for her own headband took no time or effort. Bora even lamented how it may have been cheating that she barely had to struggle to scale the mountain and could easily run one up if needed. Despite the worries of Upa's father, Chayote handicapped herself to climb the mountain the way which Bora himself told her he climbed the mountain in his youth.

The teen was by no means a warrior yet but the more time passed, the more she became sure that it was simply not meant for her to keep on training with Bora, to learn new moves with a weapon comprised of a sharp stone attached to the end of a stick and to perform more and more oddball hunting rituals to earn new feathers. Just like Bora initially thought of Chayote making it look like cheating, the Saiyan did not feel like she had earned those honors either because she was not like these Earthlings. She could understand their rituals and decorations just fine – it was the same on Planet Vegeta. Struggle bred excellence and reward.

It was just that Chayote was not one of these Earthlings and their struggle did not overly bother her, meaning that the decorations felt meaningless too. Besides the obvious, official honor of being acknowledged by a great native warrior who did earn every decoration on the agenda of an Earthling's lifetime.

* * *

"Are you sure you're ready? If you rush it, you'll just get cast down again…" Bora looked strict and a bit worried about the fact that Chayote was stretching out to climb the Korin Tower all the way back up and train martial arts properly. He may have regretted a little bit of having told her about God being this excellent martial artist because now his trouble would become God's trouble.

"Don't sweat it, it wasn't Kami that kicked me down, to begin with. It was that asshole Mr. Popo." Chayote punched her own palm to relieve some of the pumping up passion that was burning inside her. "Besides, this will be my version of the mountain you climbed for the hawk feathers. Something like this is the only thing that can make my arms burn even a little bit."

"Well… You've survived falling from the top of the tower already. If you get kicked down again, we'll be waiting here to listen to your story." Upa looked up at Chayote with a smile. He may have been suspicious about this fallen from the sky girl initially, mostly because of how scary and convincing she was about her frightening future plans, but over time he had come to warm up to her.

"Are you sure you don't want to climb with me? I'll have a tough time telling good from bad without my guide…" Chayote smirked at Upa.

"You idiot, you know I can't climb nearly that high!" Upa yelled out, just like he used to yell at the Saiyan for what seemed like the longest time. After the initial burst of emotion, the boy covered up his whimpering mouth after getting overwhelmed by a whole different set of emotions altogether.

"You're such a wimp…" Chayote looked up and away from Upa, turning her back completely at the whining boy. "I can't kill a little crybaby like you. I'll keep you as my pet."

After that declaration, the Saiyan dashed off, bouncing from one side of the tower to another, like the sabertooth tigers she had killed for a lighter meal during her time resting and training in the Sacred Land of Korin. She may have come to view the place as the first step of the major inconvenience it was to stay on Earth initially, but now she was beginning to grow kind of attached to the place. Maybe that was part of why she had to leave…

Just as the ground beneath her feet stopped being visible any longer, Chayote felt the burn in her muscles from all the leaping about that she's been doing. The Saiyan let her hand grab hold of one of the decorative ridges of the tower and remained hanging for a short breather. She was not entirely sure how tall this mountain was but when she was making the trip down the easy and fast way, it seemed like forever… Then again, who knew how much of that may have been that weird martial arts witchcraft thing.

Chayote could not wait to learn it all. In a much more straightforward dash up, she scaled the tower up. Its sandstone-colored surface became blurry and tough to tell from the sky defined by the setting Sun in the horizon. While she spent her time laying on her back and staring at the sky, the Saiyan used to wonder just what these puffy clouds in the sky felt like. Now she had busted through multiple layers of the suckers and yet she was nowhere closer of finding it out than she was back then…

A jolt of lightning hit Chayote square in the face, running down her body and then the tower itself. The Saiyan's hand remained firmly attached to the ridge while she recovered from the shock of the blast. It was nowhere near as intense as Taopaipai's energy beam but it came just about as fast and out of nowhere as that dreadful attack.

"I guess you really don't want me to get back up there, huh?" the teen smiled to herself after shaking the bolt of lightning off and continuing a much slower climb up. It would have taken thousands of these jolts of electricity to send her tumbling back down and knowing how little things of interest awaited her there only sprung Chayote to soar higher with every leap and bound.

Another jolt hit her square in the face, then another, it seemed almost like the heavens themselves were conspiring to keep the Saiyan down but the teen remained attached to the tower, clinging to it with her arms and legs while her teeth gritted through the ceaseless electric punishment. Chayote was not sure for how long she just walled the entire array of bolts flung her way but all that she could tell for certain was that it had ceased.

With a slow crawl, the Saiyan continued climbing. Just after a handful of sizeable yanks and pulls higher and higher, the end of the tower appeared within sight. Something was wrong, however. The closer the Saiyan approached the summit, the surer she became that this summit looked vastly different from Kami's lair she fell from. With infinite curiosity, the teen let the tip of her tail grab hold of the edge of a large hole and swing her up to the bottom room of the place where the Korin Tower led to.

A circular, small storage room that was completely sunken in the darkness cast on it by the night outside. All around her laid thick and sizeable jars. Led forward by the same curiosity that outright forced Chayote to swing up to this mystery place, the Saiyan approached one of these jars and looked inside. It looked like just rippling liquid, may have been water or something of similar consistency.

Something odd was happening, the surface of the water started changing until Chayote could vaguely make out shapes it was reflecting. This nothing like ordinary water, in this deep shroud of darkness there could have been nothing for the water to reflect and yet… The Saiyan could make out clear as day her own image, standing in a ridiculous pose like one Taopaipai struck before engaging in his enigmatic method of attacks called martial arts, facing a boy in a signature pose of his own, one quite possibly half her size. One in a red shirt and possessing spiky, black hair.

A boy with a tail of a Saiyan.


	6. Chasing a White Cat

Before Chayote could properly ascertain that she'd just seen herself facing against an actual Saiyan, the image on the rippling surface of the water changed. It was now displaying a massive building with a handful of others in the distance. Atop of every building flapped a crimson flag with two white R marks on them. The flags were triangular and unlike most of the military decoration that Chayote had seen. All around her were Earthlings wielding larger version of the local arm cannons that the bandits used, man-sized military robots were jetting about and aiming their own attacks as well in the frozen image.

The next flash returned Chayote back to the odd, white rectangle, surrounded by a well-maintained lawn and an entire crowd of people observing the happenings on the rectangle. While Chayote was still present at the time, this vision did not show the same thing as the one with the Saiyan before. This time Chayote was wearing a uniform similar to that of the armed Earthlings from the previous flash, except for the minor detail of the double R ribbon. She was not facing the boy Saiyan either, instead of the most interesting aspect of these visions, the sole thing that kept Chayote focused on them, to begin with, the teen Saiyan was standing in front of a three-eyed weirdo who mirrored Taopaipai's stance almost beat for beat.

Another flash… Chayote, with a significantly more damaged version of the uniform she previously observed herself in, stood alongside the Saiyan boy. Intrigued by the vision and this curious figure, the Saiyan leaned closer and closer in so that she could catch a proper glimpse of this unexpected vision. The two appeared to be standing in a fighting pose in front of the massive Kami who sat on a throne edged by bone and skulls. Could this mean that Chayote might team up with another Saiyan to finally claim this planet for the Frieza Army?

"You know, if you keep dawdling on the future, you'll forget to live the present so it becomes the future eventually." A lazy and dragging voice distracted Chayote, the Saiyan jumped up and turned back, very nearly keeping herself from flipping over and fumbling into the prophetic pot of water.

"That boy inside that pot. He was a Saiyan, wasn't he?" Chayote pointed at the pot, trying to address the creature that caught her by surprise. Much to the Saiyan's own shock, it was neither Kami nor Mr. Popo that greeted her. In fact, it was a fat, white cat. One with closed eyes and a stick not too much different from the one Kami used to walk around with.

"Oh my, is there someone in these pots? I must admit, I haven't cleaned them in a while and a lot of fools cruise along here these days. If there truly is a drowner in there, may as well…" the cat rushed toward the pot, lifted it up with its stick and carelessly flicked it over the hole that Chayote crawled onto the bottom section of the tower's summit through. The Saiyan reached out over the spilled water with regret and a speck of fury aimed towards the dumb cat.

"Answer me now, what is this place? Where's Kami? Who was that boy in the ripples?" Chayote stepped forward, swinging her fists around as if she was to let them loose. Truthfully, she couldn't care how much this cat pissed her off, it looked like a puny weakling and therefore not of any interest. Chayote's own good and evil radar had not yet properly evaluated the white cat with an eternally closed glare.

"Huh? You know Kami?" the cat bent his head to the side. "That is… Unusual. I see… You must have somehow stumbled across the Lookout without having been approved. In that case, you must have been cast down."

"Yes. Mr. Popo kicked me down. So what you're saying is that you must approve me before I can meet Kami? I'm looking to learn some martial arts from him." Chayote leaned up closer to the cat and grabbed his hands, almost like she was about to congratulate the chubby feline.

"That so?" the chubby fur ball licked his paws. "In that case, my name is Korin, and you are correct. I must test you and approve of you before you can even climb up higher to meet Kami."

"Huh? Oh… I see… I haven't climbed all the way there yet…" Chayote looked up, even though all she could see was the ceiling of the small cradle that Korin had built for himself up here. "Although… This tower is named after you, isn't it? The Korin Tower. You must be pretty good yourself. Maybe you can teach me a few moves?"

"Well… I wouldn't say all that good… It's more like legendary." Korin rubbed his cheeks before jumping up and down like a monkey. One surprisingly more agile than the cat's chubby build was initially suggesting. Chayote surmised that Korin may have even been faster than Taopaipai. Someone this strong with the train of martial arts would surely be useful in her growth. "But if you are to obtain my approval, you will need to pass my test, for which case you may need my guidance. You've climbed my tower all by yourself and you do have the proper courtesy of respecting your host."

"Cour…Tesy…" Chayote mumbled the odd word, disgracing the way it was spelled and uttered with her own mouth. It was only after she could digest what the fat cat was saying word for word that her excitement busted down all of the brick walls of her cool. "You mean you'll train me for your test? Sweet!" Chayote shot her fist up into the sky.

"Before I do… You look like you've been through quite a journey on your way up here. Someone really did not want you to finish this climb. You may wish to take some of these beans in one of those jars." Korin gestured with his hand.

"Huh? These tiny things? No way, got any dinosaur meat?" Chayote examined the little boogeresque saplings with her eye before tossing it over her shoulder and off the Korin Tower.

"You do know there is a limited supply of these, right? They are, in fact, quite rare." Korin spoke as if he had squinted in disappointment with his eyes although it was impossible to tell for sure given his unique ocular behavior.

"These little things?" Chayote eyed another bean before coming up to the same conclusion and tossing one over her shoulder. This one, however, did not fly over the edge, because Korin had caught it between two of the fingers of his thumbless paws.

"Please stop doing that," Korin spoke with a hint of bitterness before flicking the bean in an arc toward the Saiyan's mouth. Chayote may not have thought too much of these petty beans but she was not about to let a bean hit her face and fall to the ground when literally all she needed to do was to just open her mouth. The teenage alien crunched the tiny bean with a little hesitation to do so. It tasted like slimy seaweed on the inside and had a remarkably similar aroma to it inside one's mouth.

"It's a Senzu. It is enough food for ten whole days. A numbskull like you may very well just drain my resources of these before you are approved." Korin shook the larger, pointing end of his stick at Chayote.

"Huh? I must admit, I would much rather eat real meat than this… Midget celery thing." The Saiyan compared it to the closest earthly equivalent to the fishy taste. A detestable vegetable that Bora once tried tricking Chayote eating with her meat. "Anyway, I may not get to eat another one so is it fine if I take some with me? I don't have much patience so I plan on completing your training much faster than ten days."

"Imagine my surprise…" Korin rubbed his eyes. While he did enjoy the complimenting and polite first impression of the visiting Saiyan, currently he was shifting that impression quite radically. "Follow me. If you're so eager to move up, I won't keep you waiting too long. I'll brief you on the way things work and then it's all up to you."

"Aww, cool!" Chayote exclaimed in excitement, her bouncing knees could barely contain the excitement. After the cat departed from the bottom section and went higher up, using a round set of stairs by the side of the Korin's little temple, the Saiyan snagged a handful of the beans and stuffed some of them inside her pockets. The best part about wearing a boy's pants!

Feeling the irritation from her burns and the stiffness in her muscles disappear completely, Chayote's face lit up like the northern lights. She tapped her pocket to which she deposited the magical healing beans and ran up after to where Korin tapped his giant cat feet to.

"The test of your worthiness is quite simple – catch me and you'll get to drink the Holy Water. It's a mystical liquid that draws out and multiplies your hidden powers. Prove worthy to me, Korin, the Immortal Cat Deity, and you won't even need to go up and embarrass yourself in front of Kami anymore." Korin chuckled while licking his paw. The white chubby extended his staff to pick up an ancient-looking jar of water. The cat swung it about, as an alluring trick for the Saiyan to get hooked by.

Chayote dashed forward without warning. Korin leaped aside only for the Saiyan to follow. After the trick of catching the Senzu on the lower part of the temple, Chayote was well aware of the mystical technique that appeared to leave after-images that the cat employed. It must have been this "martial arts" thing that every Earthling she met spoke of. It appeared as if though Korin would not teach her any unless she overcame his test.

The chasing Saiyan only charged through a shapeless image of the cat with the real Korin already floating aside. A deafening smacking sound echoed through the temple. Chayote appeared behind the white cat and smacked it across its chubby buttocks.

"Y-You caught me…" Korin exclaimed in surprise. A sentiment that the teen was not counting on the white cat being capable of. "Right out of the gate… That has never happened before. Why didn't you take the water?"

"You kidding me?" Chayote grinned. The Saiyan pointed at her own excited face with her thumb. "Just seeing you move once back then taught me this much about movement in combat. I can't wait to see what else I can learn chasing and slapping you around."

While Korin could not open his eyes, the Saiyan could have sworn that she saw his right one twitch a tiny bit. The cat's usually lax and slowly wiggling and tangling tail froze and curled up its white fur like a hedgehog exposed his quills to the potential predator.

"I might just be in a bit of trouble, it seems…" the white cat deity lamented.

The sorry cries of a cat getting smacked across its chubby behind once in a while emanated from the Korin Tower for days on end. Chayote's instinct tipped her off to something golden in value. Korin's movements truly were all just a goldmine. The alien teen did not require the cat to teach her anything. All she could ever learn about martial arts came to her by just observing the white fluff bounce about. She saw him disperse into countless after-images. Dash with incredible speed and grace, move its body with perfect control.

Catching him with mere speed was easy. Especially after Chayote had properly grasped the basics of movement in combat. Before she only knew the primal duo of engaging and disengaging. She charged in and swung her fists and feet when the battle started, she disengaged and ran away when the enemy was too tough. There was so much more to movement than that. Space control was crucial in a fight, If Korin positioned himself right, no matter how fast Chayote was, she would always waste too much movement in her pursuit.

This training was too precious to power through like Bora's. Chayote chose to restrain herself, try and move about as fast as she saw Korin move and try to read where he would move to next, based on the insights she had come to learn from seeing him move around normally. It took until the end of the second day for Chayote to read and predict Korin's movements. Reading and actually performing up to snuff were two different things entirely, however. Not even by the end of the third day could Chayote catch Korin while restraining herself, even if she could read the cat's moves.

She was a novice, Korin appeared to have boundless mountains of experience to draw from. It was like there was a difference of hundreds of years between their experiences.

"You know, you've caught me multiple times already. You could snag the Holy Water just like that, it's clear as day." Korin huffed and panted after the third day of Chayote's training.

"Sure. But I've already got all the power I need. Without learning this martial arts thing, power and speed are all meaningless. At this point, I think I've even been breathing wrong this whole time…" Chayote squinted in observation of how the fur under Korin's nose moved and rippled while she chased after the cat once more.

She was breathing all wrong. Namely, she hadn't been breathing at all. Whether out of ill instinct advice or because of some bad training, she's been clutching up her breath inside whenever she tensed her body and attacked someone seriously. It was only now, after chasing Korin around for a while that Chayote had learned to appreciate a little bit of smoothness in her motion and, most of all, to just let it go.

The Saiyan used to see boredom as a pathetic thing. Something to be burnt down and obliterated upon first sight. Now the girl understood that without learning every motion she did while fighting until it turned boring for her to do, she would never truly master that particular movement and while she had picked up on a lot of things from chasing the white cat around, she had not mastered anything just yet.

"I think I will grow old here…" Chayote admitted by the end of the fifth day, with a genuine smile on her face. This entire day she just chased a fat, white cat around as if she had nothing better to do. Truthfully, it was not that she did not have other goals occupying her mind, those goals may as well have not existed given how easily Chayote forgot all about them when training with Korin.

"And it will be entirely pointless…" Korin admitted.

"Wait, what?" Chayote cocked her head to the side in confusion.

"True. You've been picking up on martial arts through observation. You've got a talent for that, I must admit. Talent, unlike any student I have had the honor of showing a thing or two. It's like you're not even human, honestly… However… You're far too strong for your own good. The point of my training is to improve you by having you move around in this dense air of the high altitudes while chasing someone of my skill level. This water is just a sham, just tap water." Korin admitted.

"But… I caught right from the get-go." Chayote sighed.

"Exactly, my training is utterly pointless on someone like you. You've just been picking up what you could notice me do. I feel like this is just about enough of this trickery. What is it exactly that you want?" Korin looked at Chayote, finally moving past his trickery and turning serious just for a moment.

"I… I don't even know anymore. There's just so much on this planet for me. Initially, I thought to burn it all down, ruin it by wiping its surface clean and leaving it as just some chunk of space rock to sell for the Frieza Army…" Chayote began voicing something she's been feeling for a while now. Something that had not begun to take shape until she began looking at picking up martial arts with seriousness.

"The what now?" Korin turned his head to the side in bemusement.

"Now though… I'm not so sure… I want to beat Taopaipai because he's made a mockery out of fighting. He's turned my passion into something only done for something as useless as a stack of currency. I want to kill every evil person on this planet because it's a path that Bora and Upa set me on because it has led me to meeting you and learning about martial arts. I want to learn to shoot energy from my hands without the aid of arm cannons, I want to meet that Saiyan boy too… There's too much left for me to experience and see on this world to destroy it just yet." Chayote admitted.

"Heh… I think I can show you a thing or two about Ki, the energy you speak of. If you want to keep walking the path of martial arts and meet that boy, however, you will need to travel to Papaya Island to the south-east from here in three years and meet a student of mine who's become somewhat of a prodigy of teaching martial arts. His name is Muten Roshi." Korin explained.

"Muten Roshi…" Chayote repeated just to memorize the name. "So I have three whole years to train here then? I wonder how long an Earth year lasts…"

"Oh boy… It seems like we've got a bit of work to do before I let you out into the world. I need to make sure you can even tell south from north, to begin with…" Korin lamented before picking his cane back up. "Let's show you a thing or two about how Ki works for starters…"

While it was not meant for someone as spontaneous and jumpy as Chayote to last three whole years of the Immortal Cat Deity's training. She would take just about as much as she could before her knuckles started getting itchy, even if she could barely feel the physical benefits of the whole experience, the liberation and enlightenment she received from it were just too sweet to abandon easily.


	7. Tying up the Knots

A top floor of a tall building wing with the decoration of red tiles with quartz tiles that formed a pair of R shapes on both sides of the red formations spun across the sky. Inside it, Taopaipai sat with his arms crossed over his chest. The world's deadliest assassin had considered trying something new this time, instead of splitting the sky with a column or another debranched tree he flung the top of a building like a discus.

While hopping across the sky and landing perfectly in the spinning floor of the building looked profoundly cool, flying across half of the world while spinning around in an uncontrollable spin did not do any wonders for Taopaipai's stomach.

From up above a swift, orange blur slammed into the top of the spinning flying saucer and sent it crashing down into the forest of the Sacred Land of Korin below. Inside the crashing structure, Taopaipai grabbed the sides of the dislodged top floor by the two sides of a control panel and cursed to himself. He would not express his endless frustration with these accursed lands this subtly however before the initial moments of shock could pass, the man erupted in a deafening outrage.

"Not this again!" Taopaipai raged.

A pair of leather boots tapped onto the forest floor with the light tap of a landing eagle, looking around for the next prey to swoop at and execute with marvelous precision and then feast upon the fruits of its labor and talent combined. A simian tail flapped and whipped around in excitement, hanging from a small hole in male pants and a light brown shirt with darker brown ornaments across it.

Busting through the only intact window of the recently crashed improvised aircraft that Taopaipai was traveling with, the cold-hearted assassin landed farther in front of his assailant and only after settling on the outside of the crash site did his eyes bother to examine the young woman that had derailed the procession of his contract.

"It's not that djinn bastard on the carpet… Wait… You!?" Taopaipai looked shocked and leaned back in surprise. He even cowered with his arms placed and bent in front of him, breaking his flawless martial arts stance which he employed in his battles.

"Yeah, you ran away before I could kill you last time. That wasn't very nice." Chayote grinned with a slight hint of restraint behind her emotions. While her whipping about tail betrayed the excitement of the Saiyan, her mood swings were now infinitely less noticeable due to laborious emotional training that the young woman had gone through atop of the Korin Tower.

"Hmph… You've acquired some decorations since last time. War paint and feathers and such. I assume you have trained somewhat before challenging me again?" Taopaipai stroke his mustache in relative amusement. Given what Chayote had surmised and heard of the man's personality, he still thought himself superior to the Saiyan despite their somewhat on par clash the last time. "It would be a pity to throw all of those accomplishments away…" the man surmised.

Chayote removed the spear hanging from her back and placed it in front of her, assuming the spear fighting pose that Bora had shown her before her ascent up the Korin Tower.

"I have not grown stronger or faster in any way. The training I've done was too easy to challenge me, sadly." The young woman admitted before smirking with the left side of her face. "However, I've taken the first steps of a thousand-mile journey."

"What's that? Must have fallen off of a mountain while looking for those feathers and hit your head pretty hard… You poor, mad thing, let me put you out of your delirious misery." Taopaipai took his fighting stance having somewhat accepted the fact that Chayote had survived his previous beating.

The deadly martial artist removed a tiny, pink storage gadget, pressed the button on top and let the gadget fall to the ground at which point it exploded into a boom of smoke and a unique, almost mechanical sound. The entire show of smoke and noise was disrupted by a metallic clang of a single-edged broadsword falling down and rolling about on the floor. Taopaipai picked up the sword and swung it over his head, entering high sword-fighting stance.

Chayote attacked first, attacking with the tip of her spear using a flurry of thrusts that Taopaipai easily avoided. The assassin caught a pair of thrusts, attempting to entrap the spear tip using his strength but he had enough foresight to not contest in terms of raw power with the Saiyan youth and let go of the spear so that he would not fall for any follow-up attacks. With a single, spinning slash, following up one of his gracious evasive moves, Taopaipai cut the spear in the middle.

Having no skill in fighting using two shorter sides of one spear, the teenage Saiyan tossed the broken weapon aside. Taopaipai attacked Chayote repeatedly with his sword in similar, wild swings but Chayote managed to avoid the first few strikes whereas, after becoming sick of dancing around the subject, with a triumphant roar, Chayote punched straight at the edge of the blade, busting the sword in half. While the teen attempted to keep pressing her attack onward, Taopaipai dashed backward and avoided the follow-up uppercut.

With a sudden leap forward, the assassin lunged at Chayote with the same attack that she had endured previously, the one that had almost snapped her neck.

Taopaipai flew forward with a dashing knee strike, only for Chayote to place a block and cushion it. Once Taopaipai transitioned forward into a gut punch, the Saiyan leaped over her attacker whilst her tail wrapped around the assassin's wrist and drove his fist smacking into his face. Taopaipai threw a wild kick to his backside that landed onto Chayote's back, the Saiyan slid back to Taopaipai's original position while the assassin staggered about, clutching at his bleeding nose that he himself busted.

"You m-mock me!?" Taopaipai wheezed through the natural difficulties breathing that having a busted nose provided to a combatant.

"Sorry, couldn't let you kick me around like the last time. While fun, I don't want you to run away again." The Saiyan wiggled her finger.

Taopaipai charged onward, without waiting for his nosebleed to stabilize. That was a dumb move, his breathing shall be all over the place this way. The teen warrior danced around his opponent's attacks, waiting for the pressure-point-striking assassin to wind out and she was not in for a stretched out wait. It looked like the opening presented to Chayote as if wrapped in an actual red ribbon.

With a straight, rising kick, Chayote sent her opponent flying diagonally back up. Unwilling to let her opponent out scot-free after such an amateur mistake, the Saiyan pursued her opponent into the air, dashing above the assassin to unleash a flurry of leg stomps that derailed the assassin's arrowing path skyward and allowed the Saiyan to land onto the man's chest with both of her knees crushing Taopaipai into the ground.

"D-Damn it… You really have soared leagues above in just a handful of days…" Taopaipai grumbled while wiping his bleeding nose and wheezing after the Saiyan's crushing landing had driven the final nail in the coffin of his hopes for lady fortune of looking his way that day.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you. If you stopped for a moment and stopped giving in to your sadistic urges and petty anger, you'd see that I have not grown any stronger at all. Had I grown any stronger, I'd have killed you outright with a single strike." Chayote looked frustrated that her opponent could not identify the fact that she's actually added adequate skill in martial arts on top of her awesome natural strength, speed and toughness.

"If I can't match you in hand to hand… Dodonpa!" Taopaipai exclaimed while throwing his finger forward, fury gleaming from his eyes, that same boiling wrath transitioning into a bursting beam of light that blasted like a rogue ray of light in Chayote's direction. With a careless swipe of her hand, the Saiyan deflected the beam aside, letting it pierce through the trees and then explode in a relatively tame manner for something of its power.

Despite his showing. Taopaipai was a remarkable martial artist. He had managed to unleash such lethality in his Ki within such a contained beam that did not explode all too strong whereas the assassin had the capacity of leveling a far more incredible distance than a few trees and throwing up some smoke from a puny crater that the beam had made. Chayote was right to previously consider the man inspiring, however, he surrendered to his vices and emotions too far, that was what separated Taopaipai from Master Korin. Korin was cool and subdued in all matters… Most matters. No one was perfect.

Taopaipai gave into his sadism and his meaningless reputation. Thusly he threw away a considerable amount of his skill by squandering his uncanny martial arts style. Once Chayote realized how far she's transcended from this level, the current engagement began boring her. She placed a hand to her side in a similar pose that the other Saiyans held it when ready to shoot out an energy wave.

"You call that a Ki Blast? This is a Ki Blast…" Chayote exclaimed while preparing for her finishing touch but Taopaipai fell to his knees all of a sudden. What odd martial arts stance was this!?

"W-Wait! H-Have mercy on me, will you!?" Taopaipai groveled. Chayote straightened her body out and cocked her head to the side like a confused puppy. She was fully aware that she was dropping her iron composure by showing this deeper insight into her emotions but it did not matter all that much to the Saiyan.

"Ha! Die, you fool!" Taopaipai yelled out while pulling out a tiny, handheld container of sorts and lobbing it in Chayote's general direction. The taunting was a dead giveaway already, the Saiyan felt utterly confident that she'd been able to kill the assassin before he had even pulled out his tiny device, however, overcome by curiosity over this Taopaipai's ultimate strategy, Chayote stood tall and did not budge even when the thrown gadget beamed out with intense, white light and detonated with a thunderous explosion.

"You're the fool…" Chayote's voice made Taopaipai open up in paralyzing fear before the smoke from the grenade blast had even cleared out. "Your Earthling weaponry is far inferior to Ki attacks."

Upon revealing how idiotic Taopaipai's final gambit was, in retrospect of him having seen Chayote both survive the Dodonpa by taking it head-on as well as smacking it aside, the Saiyan dashed onward and resumed her left-leaning Ki channeling stance while slamming at Taopaipai with a brutal palm strike right at his solar plexus. The eyes of the overwhelmed assassin shifted about while his face twisted in hilarious manners, the man's tongue stuck out from the pain and agonizing sensations running up and down his nervous system.

"Lima Spear!" Chayote yelled out, no longer feeling overly attached to the sharp stone on a stick that she'd lost earlier after having discovered a new type of "spear", one that she owned in its entirety.

Before the initial shock could even properly walk up and down Taopaipai's nervous system, a violet Ki Blast blasted the cold-hearted assassin from a close distance, carrying him off into the nearest rocky platform and then leveling it entirely with a rising Ki pillar. Chayote waited for her opponent to reveal himself and try to entertain her some more but apart from a burnt chunk of the assassin's long coat, no signs of his existence were in sight.

Chayote turned her sights to the south of the Korin Tower and the Sacred Land of Korin. After looking for a brief moment in the location of where the assassin had come from the Saiyan cupped her hands together and yelled out.

"Kinto!" Chayote called out into the sky. In a shriek sounding like the final moments of someone meeting an agonizing end, a dark purple cloud descended from the sky and stopped in front of the Saiyan. The dark cloud caught the teen while she leaped up into the sky and carried her to the north, where the Korin Tower, as well as Bora and Upa's camp, were. Before she went off her own ways, it sort of felt right that the Saiyan would say her farewells to her most faithful minions.

* * *

"So you've killed this Taopaipai man…" Bora left it hanging ominously and mysterious as to if he approved of the act or not. "You've made the Sacred Land of Korin much safer, it seems."

"I still don't get why you have to leave…" Upa looked down and turned his gaze away from where Chayote was filling her stomach in front of a fire. "This is all so sudden. You ride in on a black cloud after having disappeared for almost two whole weeks and declare you're leaving."

"That was Kinto. A flying cloud of sorts. It isn't the real Kintoun as, for whatever reason, I was unable to sit on it but it's the next best thing. Korin said that he'll have it disperse one day just to see me fall flat on my face and have a laugh so… I have that to look forward to." Chayote turned her attention to the crystal clear night's sky.

"Where will you be going? If you're so adamant about leaving, you must have a destination in mind." Bora wondered.

"First, I need to pay a visit to Taopaipai's employers. They must be residing far east from here, given how he's traveled there for his contract and from there after he's taken it. It's been several weeks since I've started preparing Earth for being sold to the highest bidder and I haven't moved an inch closer. I need to stack up a body-count for a couple of years I'll spend training and a base of evil, assassin-hiring guys is just what I need." The Saiyan declared with celebratory cheer in her voice.

"And then?" Bora inquired.

"Then… I will be heading for the World Martial Arts Tournament to the south-east. There is a pupil of Korin's that I must meet to continue my training. The cat told me that I should have no problem convincing Muten Roshi to train me for some reason…" Chayote smiled with a mouthful of meat showing through her grin.

Upa looked to Bora with a sad glance but the father affirmed his son with a nod. It was time to let-go and the native protector was glad that someone like Chayote appeared and taught Upa this lesson. One day his son might need to let go of something much more than just a friend to hang out around. One day he would need to take over the protector's duty from Bora and having learned this lesson and suffered through this pinch of pain will help the boy overcome the massive burden of the future to come.

"Your clothes are all busted, you klutz!" Upa yelled at Chayote, it may have been the last time in quite a while that he would get to do that so the shrimp decided to empty his throat and his chest.

"I guess… I'll grab something from those R-R guys. They're supposed to be warriors, don't they?" Chayote pondered. "I'm sure they'll have something honorable and fitting to borrow."

"Thinking things through… It's like you've descended as a whole different person." Bora smiled.

"You'll visit us though, won't you?" Upa looked at Chayote with wet eyes. It was the trait of a true and strong protector of the Sacred Lands to never show tears so the twerp combatted his emotions the best he could.

"Sure. That black cloud is really damned fast. I'll be hours away from any point in the whole world with that." The Saiyan nodded before letting a chunk of meat to get stuck in her throat, forcing Chayote to smack at her chest to try and swallow the deadly chunk of dinosaur meat as well as enlisting Upa's aid of slamming his tiny fists at the girl's back like it was a drum he's been working.

* * *

The Dark Kinto was much faster than even what Chayote described it being like to Upa. Before the boy's final goodbyes even reached Chayote, the Saiyan and her black cloud were long past the point in space where she could hear them. The best that the teen warrior could hope was to turn away just in time to see Upa's hand waving goodbye, crying and laughing at the same time. Whatever happened to the brat wanting to become more like his father, who just smiled with an approving glare and looked ahead at the departing warrior like he looked forward to the inevitable future to come.

With a single mighty burst of speed, Chayote let the Dark Kinto spearhead her through the air and the clouds. It was a good call to ascend past the layer of leafage and thick forests. The young Saiyan had not yet had a chance to deal with the immense speed of the cloud she was riding, she'd only received it as a gift shortly before her descent from the tower and even then she only had the limited space of Korin's Temple to ride it around in.

This was a whole different thing… Chayote let the cloud spin about and gain more and more speed, hurling like an arrow. Forests turned rarer and rarer before transitioning into a mountainous, winter scenery. Spruces and pines, covered in snow, were an impressive replacement for the ancient oaks of the Sacred Land of Korin. Chayote did not get to enjoy them for long

An impressive formation of aircraft lined up in front of the young woman. Ones that appeared better suited for warfare compared to the sizeable and rather pathetic version of aircraft that Taopaipai first crashed into Chayote's life in. They must have been scouting, wondering if Taopaipai was making his return already after a job well done seeing how nobody else would have been brave enough to travel the Sacred Lands of Korin on foot or by plane.

The Red Ribbon Army were in for a rude and unforeseen clash with an alien wrecking ball. One that had little to no grief with them besides vague ideals for destruction and demise for anybody evil that would force the interplanetary visitor to keep on going until not a stone remained unturned in the Red Ribbon Base.


	8. The Red Raid

An Earthling soldier in a winter coat, donning a red ribbon around his left arm placed his hands over his head and leaned in on the front plane window. The pilot could not quite believe what he'd been seeing. It appeared like a native girl with war paint and feathers standing atop of a black cloud. The teen was just standing there, in mid-air, staring blank right back at the lines and formations of the planes that approached to scout the situation out.

"It's not Taopaipai… I repeat, it's not Taopaipai!" the pilot leaned into the communicator to report back to the headquarters. Before he could begin to report about what it was exactly that he's been seeing, the black cloud exploded in a burst of speed and disappeared out of the range of the pilot's vision. The plane shook from right to left.

Par the proper engagement protocol, air-force soldiers were supposed to rush the wide wingspan and unleash living hell matching the right miniguns attached to each carrier plane. For whatever reason, the Red Ribbon army had found slower carrier planes with the heaviest possible weaponry and the capability to carry an additional squad of soldiers atop of its massive wingspan superior to whatever aircraft it used before.

On top of that, the mechanical, unmanned buzzers went wild all of a sudden. The smaller vehicles that were meant for blitzkrieg speeds and thunderous enemy suppression started buzzing about as if the enemy had just engaged them but… Where is the enemy? Deafening screams made the pilot's heart sink to his toes as he observed in horror dozens of soldiers being flung from the wings and plummeting below. All of them came equipped with parachutes but it would still be less than a fun landing in the middle of an unforgiving mountain range.

Still, it was either crossing that or heading through the Sacred Land of Korin to the nearest point of civilization where they could request a pick-up. That's even if the Red Ribbon would bother offering pick-ups to some low-ranking no-names.

The entire warplane trembled and quaked. The radars and screens providing damage reports lit up red before going black all at the same time. It did not require one of the most advanced in the world radar systems to register a six-ton warplane going down. Wings separated and flew off right before the pilot's very eyes. A pair of verily confused and frightened beyond anything the man's been frightened like eyes.

The same native girl appeared in view, right beside the left illuminator, forcing the pilot to stick to it and get a better look at the deceased attacker. The struggling with accepting his demise pilot had always known that something crazy has been going on in the Sacred Land of Korin as there was a nasty tendency of any foot-traveling soldiers to be found pinned to trees by massive spears or some similar manner of bad dealings. This… Why would those crazy natives ever leave their little paradise?

Also… Was that a tail waggling right beside the girl's knees?

The eyes of the warrior shot wide open as the black cloud caught her and carried her upward. The pilot looked up and tried to follow the tailed girl's ascension for as long as he could.

A cascade of bright and thunderous flashes lit up the snowy floor of the mountain range beneath. Chayote kept maneuvering around these explosive projectiles that Earthlings kept firing her way. That last one seemed to hurt a little, more than anything else the force behind it tossed the Saiyan off of the plane and sent her plummeting. There was little to none actual pain involved, her clothes were completely tattered though.

"That's what we bomb cities with!" a soldier yelled out to his fellow, lowering his large, automated lead cannon shortly after Chayote landed firmly atop another carrier plane. "Who is this kid!?"

* * *

"Damn it!" a dwarf-sized man with red hair and a red ribbon tied around his arm raged while sitting in front of a room-spanning radar screen. He could hear the muzzled sounds of his men being thrown about like ragdolls by an unknown enemy force. "I knew that it was far too soon for a confirmed kill, even for Taopaipai!"

"It does not seem like the airforce can hold the enemy back for much longer. It might be wise to pull some of it back and use it to protect the base once the enemy reaches it." A dark-skinned man in a rather loose, even for his own impressive build, suit observed in a cold and calculated manner.

"And bomb my own base!? Forget it, you idiot! Damn it! Why now!? Right when we're so close to being done with our radar, right about when we discover the secret of what these Dragon Balls can do…" the angry, middle-aged dwarf of a man threw his fists up in the air in a hissy fit. This appeared to greatly displease the blue creature of wide ears and blood-red eyes sitting on his lap, the outrage forced the deadly pet to hiss and leap away from its master.

"We don't know anything about this enemy. Who is it? Someone assisting the village chief that we're interrogating? Perhaps one of his loved ones is more dangerous than we assumed…" the taller, dark-skinned member of the red-ribbon donning army force shared observations to himself without an end in sight.

"And you said that hiring Taopaipai to exterminate them and grief the village chief into telling us about Dragon Balls was a bad idea! You need to remember who's in charge, Staff Officer Black!" the not quite fully developed, one-eyed commander of the army observed. It was only when much more deep-seated malice ran through his mind and very veins that the man calmed himself for a moment.

"Of course, Commander Red. What is our course of action?" Staff Officer Black inquired.

"Activate all our defenses! Blast that damned enemy right out of the sky!" Red replied with previously unseen fervor. "Activate the Metallitron Squad, how many high-ranking officers do we have present to defend the base?"

"Just Colonel Violet and General Copper, Captain Yellow is amongst the welcoming committee. The rest are setting up their bases, just as you instructed. Are you sure that activating all defenses is a good idea, Sir? They'll rip right through our own planes!" Staff Officer Black objected.

"Shut up and do as you're told, you ungrateful bastard!" Commander Red yelled so loud and with so much passion that he dropped the still smoking cigar right out of his mouth. "I'd like to see you do a better job running this operation…" he observed with much more contained spite.

"O-Of course, Commander Red!" Staff Officer Black bowed his head and ran off to the communicator to issue the orders.

* * *

"Heh, heh… Just a little girly!" a man strangely similar to the sabertooth tigers that Chayote seldom brought for food, the likes of which Bora also liked to hunt, observed once the rushing, airborne Saiyan warrior landed right on top of his plane. These large ones were a genuine pleasure to ride – they served almost like a guiding pathway for the Saiyan. Chayote leaped on top of one, kicked everybody's ass, punched the wings off and then moved on ahead.

Serves these primitive Earthlings right for relying on bird-like aerodynamics for their aircraft!

The tiger-man pointed a relatively large, likely custom-made, handheld arm-cannon at Chayote and fired a pair of massive slugs at her face. The Saiyan just observed without a bother as the large-caliber projectiles ripped right through the imbecile's own illuminator and pressed the tiger man to the busted glass while rushing out air threatened to suck the tiger man right out through the glass shredder.

If he was puny enough to get shredded by the mere glass, he deserved this grisly end. It was a pity, his jacket was insanely cool! Chayote made note of how kickass the gear of Earthling airforce soldiers was and wondered if perhaps the military base she was working towards had any storage units of just the same kind of gear. The aircraft in the midst of battle tended to explode and the soldiers tended to plummet down before Chayote could rob them of their clothes to replace her own busted outfit.

A loud shriek preceded a powerful blast that tossed Chayote swinging back like a ragdoll. It barely hurt at all but the force of tossing that the blast offered was considerable enough. Dark Kinto managed to catch the Saiyan without much problem. The teen identified how troublesome these anti-aircraft cannons on the ground were. If one of them hit her on top of Kinto she'd crash down and have to walk the rest of the way not only there but also to Papaya Island once the time came for the tournament.

"It's been fun but let's leave these guys to crash and burn, Kinto…" Chayote mumbled, knowing full well that in the hectic conditions of a burning aerial battle there was no one but herself to hear this command. Almost as if it came instinctively, Dark Kinto blasted onward at the speed of lightning, rotating and outracing every single one of the ground anti-air blasts.

The base was now in sight. It was a relatively impressive establishment, rivaling historic Saiyan barracks before they were contacted by King Cold and offered all of the amazing scientific advancements, accumulated by the Cold Force. A thick, red brick wall surrounded an assortment of buildings of various sizes, men littered the entire encampment like ants. Bullets and rockets buzzed about Chayote's current aerial position while the teenage Saiyan prepared to swoop down and not leave the place until there was nothing left.

"Time to practice for when I have to wipe out the entire planet's military!" Chayote's face dyed with a malicious grin as she leaped off of Dark Kinto and dove down at the red brick wall, where the rocket and missile wielding soldiers positioned themselves.

* * *

A squad of seasoned warriors of the most powerful military force on Earth, a fact that the assailant of their headquarters must have been unfamiliar with, stood in perfect sync with their most powerful and advanced weaponry all aimed at the upper angles of the walls surrounding the base. The utmost edges of the walls were too high up for premature fire to hit them, plus, all those rockets and high-caliber gunfire would be chipping at their own wall so the soldiers waited on standby until the commando responsible for each squad ordered to fire.

An anthropomorphic dog wielding a high-caliber, automated assault rifle allowed his glare to temporarily stray onto the nearest commando. A fright-inspiring individual with muscles for brain and, if initial impressions were to be believed, also their internal organs for their musculature could not have made any reasonable strength. Then there was the fact that most of them wore nothing but a sleeveless shirt with a Red Ribbon insignia in the center or a tracksuit from the morning's running session that got interrupted by this mysterious attacker.

Then there was the fact that those profoundly brave, or just thick in the brain department, soldiers carried nothing but knives or batons into battle. A handful made use of the mini-guns and four-to-eight-barrel rocket launchers but most of those berserkers were almost ready to leap at the threat, that took down warplanes and the entire ground, anti-aircraft defense system with bare hands, armed with nothing but a petty knife or a fancy smacking stick.

The first signals of impending battle announced themselves with the fusillade of raining manpower. Explosions cascaded through the top of the walls, those were the mortar cannons going out in a blink of an eye while every man positioned atop of the wall was killed in a way that sent them flying across the entire military base or high up into the sky to where the men would have woken up in the mountains had they survived their impressive trip.

"What are you waiting for? Fire!" a short, bald man with a blue mohawk ordered the soldiers. General Copper commanded the forces from a military jeep with a riot shotgun of his own in hand. Despite the man's short stature, his arms were thick and his fingers were oddly long enough to handle the massive firepower in his hands.

"B-But our own wa…" one of the foot soldiers decided that it was a good idea to argue with General Copper himself.

The soldier fell dead before finishing the sentence, prompting the rest of the fortune seekers to follow those that wished to see the end of the day and attack the very barrier that was supposed to prevent the enemy forces from making their way inside the base. While the gunfire may have taken the entire day to pelt the thick and tall wall away, the rockets busted colossal chunks of it down in seconds.

In a spectral whisper, the assailant – a measly teenage girl wearing an outfit of a male native local of the Sacred Land of Korin dashed to the midst of the soldiers, unleashing hellfire of fists and feet upon the confused soldiers that failed to turn and face their enemy in time and all met the same high-flying fate of their wall-protecting colleagues. The teen kissed the ground when the semi-automated barrage of riot shotgun fire ground her to the floor. The assailant attempted to get back up and destroy General Copper for attacking her but the commandos began piling on top of the native soldier that had made impressive strides for a sole attacker.

One of the commandos laughed in defiance of their impending doom as General Copper began lobbing incendiary, flash and frag grenades at the body pile. Blowing up most of the present in the southern wing of the Red Ribbon Headquarters engagement commandos but, at least as far as General Copper had hoped, killing the banshee that had made so much progress in sieging the base of the world's most ruthless and powerful military force.

From the deepest tongues of the resulting hellfire, Chayote appeared with the warrior's ceremonial robe granted to her as a gift by Bora and Upa almost completely burnt to a crisp. The Saiyan evaded the wide spread of the riot shotgun's semi-automated fire and grabbed General Copper's hand as he clutched the grenade he was about to use to gain some distance between the two again. Despite his impressive gear, the high-ranking official did not count on Chayote closing the distance between the tiny crater that the previous onslaught of grenades had caused and his jeep.

A deafening blast echoed the demise of the first greeting forces. More and more soldiers rushed from the buildings of the headquarters they resided in. There was cannon fodder wielding cold weapons and mere handguns, soldiers that had no weaponry of their own but ran about with canine companions that they sicced on Chayote only for the canines to be dispatched of with quick and precise elbow and knee strikes.

There were more footmen providing suppressive automated fire, even more commandos and even the buildings around the base lit up with flares once in a while due to intensive sniper fire. Why the bunch tried this hard when it was self-evident that their enemy was completely bulletproof and chose to evade or catch the incoming gunfire merely as morning stretching exercise, was beyond the Saiyan.

"You won't win! We're the Red Ribbon, the strongest military in the world!" one defiant and dying soldier decided to announce. Chayote found that very interesting. There may have been even more use in dispatching of these jokers in that case. Not only did they make a mockery out of martial arts and fighting in general by paying fighters to do their killing for them, while they were weak as a sock, not only were they an entire base full of evil people for Chayote to get back on track in her quest of wiping the planet's surface clean for when the Frieza Army finds this planet and assimilates it into its flock of control, they, apparently, also were the most powerful military, making their pitiful resistance a great practice before the main course.

Chayote did not respond nor did she finish the dying soldier off. With a powerful leap, the Saiyan did, however, dash through the window of the nearby building and began engaging the snipers that thought they had holed up in their little sanctuaries nicely. The sniper havens did have some more footmen and commandos inside to watch over the vulnerable glass cannons but those had never provided much resistance in the past. More and more screams signaled the end for this building. After busting through the top floor window and back-flipping onto the roof, Chayote examined the location from a nice vantage point.

Some of the unmanned buzzards with automated cannons buzzed in and formed a little swarm around the Saiyan. They displayed no hesitations in unleashing the full brunt of their weaponry upon the rampaging Saiyan warrior. Truth be told, unless she hopped back onto the Dark Kinto, Chayote did not have many options of engaging those buzzing pests so, for a short while at least, she had decided to stick to a more grounded level. The Saiyan pointed her open palm at a nearby building and let a purple, palm-sized Ki Blast blow out an opening in the side of the building, leaving it with damage resembling a chomp from a Kaiju on the side.

A white flash disrupted Chayote's dreams of following up on her raid. Before she realized what was happening, the Saiyan was airborne and crashed through a dark green dome where even more foot soldiers resided and unleashed even more suppressive fire. These folks seemed split halfway, while one half of them felt encouraged by the partial success of the aerial raid of the warplanes making their presence known again, the other half looked quite willing to ditch the base at its current point of disarray.

"Dammit, the Silver Corps are here now! What are you cowards running away from!?" one of the willing and able soldiers firing upon their own cowardly lot declared.

"This girl slew the entirety of the Brown Squadron, now you expect us to fight with the Silver Corps bombing our own base from above!? You're all crazy!" an anthropomorphic crocodile with shades hiding from behind a table and slowly firing back at his own peers replied. While the wooden table proved to be a poor barrier for the rebelling reptilian, Chayote very much enjoyed her freebie of getting to get back on her feet and rush after the soldiers inside the massive green dome while they were pre-occupied executing their own for disobedience.

"Those cool commando tracksuits… Where are they?" the teen inquired of the bleeding out crocodile after examining the shades of the downed soldier. They were far too big and busted for the Saiyan to borrow. Neither did these Earthling spectacles possess the quality of a scouter, something that may have been useful in the journey to come.

"T-The western wing." The reptilian replied before sticking out his tongue and his eyes taking a cartoonish X shape. Earthlings in this stage of the planet's development possessed the most outlandish quirks.

The swamp-colored dome at the north-southern corner of the base exploded into bits after a coordinated drop of bombs by the Silver Corps. Chayote walked out from the resulting fiery inferno and glared up at the swarming warplanes up above. If allowed the rule over the skies, these troublesome aircrafts would surely make Chayote's quest for the decimation and looting of this base more difficult.

Then again, if she leaped atop of the Dark Kinto, Chayote risked having a single one of those massive bombs killing the cloud and leaving her without any aircraft of her own. Surely there would no longer be any left after she was done with this place…

The siege of the Red Ribbon was well underway.


	9. Almost-Matching Drapes

The Silver Corps was an elite aerial division capable of pretty much any task. Even if their leader was not present in their current mission, being engaged in setting up military bases in the northeast, the masters of aerial combat were up to any task. Even throwing bombs from above at the Red Ribbon base itself. Unlike the cowering, ant-like ground units, the Silver Corps would not back down until…

The adamant sentiment in the heart of every air fighter shook from its foundation when a thunderous blast sent a fighter down spinning. That blast was the one that missed the target as the ground unit knocking them all down needed a few shots to get used to whatever they were using to attack the aerial units. With this much firepower, could there have ever been any doubt that this was the assailant that slew the entire Brown Squadron?

"Wait… I think that's OUR guns taking us do…" a radio signal made most of the full of their own grandeur soldier sitting about as high up their leather and steel throne as their current altitude slip up a step. The next blast, the first one that connected directly did not just blow a soldier out of the sky, it blew them up and then some. The resonating shockwave sent several more planes shaking, it was only due to the uncanny skill of the Silver Corps that, out of the shaken bunch, not a single unit crashed.

"Those ARE our guns! What's happening!?" another radio signal reached the interconnected network. More and more screeching static noises followed by a bubbly disconnection noise telegraphed the quick end to another handful of planes.

"Dammit, is the base firing back at us!?" one of the soon-to-be-downed soldiers wondered.

"What the sh…" before yet another elite aerial unit could finish that potty-mouth thought, an explosion beside several of their colleagues tipped the folk off to the demise of the swearing soldier.

"The Red Ribbon's got the most advanced anti-air system, unless we nuke the whole base into a crater, we're done here!" a remaining field commander, after countless spontaneous field promotions, declared as the buzzing sky of bombarding daredevils cleared out to only the unmanned, automated, high-caliber gunfire spitting buzzards.

"There's still the Metallitron Squad and the Battle Jacket. Cheer up, boys. Whoever's down there won't get any more ground." The field commander tried cheering up the troops he just ordered to retreat.

"Sir, the attacker's in the middle of our base, using our anti-aircraft weaponry against us, they've got all the ground they want, it feels like."

One final explosion of a missile fired at the devious-minded pilot lit up the sky and sent airwaves across the tundra and the mountains to the north and to the rich in diversity and thick in size and numbers forests to every other direction.

* * *

"This weaponry is primitive, though satisfying and effective against the locals of same technological advancement stage…" Chayote observed to herself while scanning the sky in a massive steel dome that had cannon tubes the size of a small building sticking out all over its front. "I suppose if the most powerful military on the planet has not mastered space travel, there's no hope of me leaving until someone finds me and picks me up."

It was because of such naïve and longing thoughts that the following attack had caught the Saiyan unprepared. An unorthodox assault, to say the least, a colossal fist flew at the teen, however, unlike the normal manner one would use a giant floating fist projectile for, it did not merely punch – it blew up together with the building hosting the massive anti-aircraft stations on its roof.

It was not that the fire or the blast itself were particularly hot or that the blast did any damage whatsoever to Chayote, it was merely because of elementary physics that she got ragdolled about yet again and found herself surrounded by the draining forces of the Red Ribbon ground units. Those few that were mad enough to approach the young woman, likely ones oblivious to her sheer power, speed and nonchalant attitude towards taking lives as well as her destructive tendencies, perhaps merely those choosing to not believe the stories of their disobedient fleeing comrades, soon found themselves directing their attention at a pair of heavy shoes landing nearby.

The heavy thud from under said shoes sent quakes across for at least the nearest four-hundred meters and the badass appearance of the deadly operative hunting after the Saiyan raider spoke by itself. The soldiers, as numerous as they were, figured that if that thing could not kill the attacker, they would have stood no way in hell of doing it either.

Wiping slobber off of her face, Chayote stood back up and faced the one-armed giant. It was a towering brute that matched some of the garages hosting tanks and APCs that the Saiyan had seen in the earlier stages of her invasion. The size of the man's muscles, visible through his burgundy-colored, sleeveless military vest told stories of the man's only rivals in terms of having a neck massive enough to be squeezed by these arms being dinosaurs. The white, spiky cut on the man's head contrasted the cool, dark shades he was wearing on his eyes.

"You gave up an arm for a blast that pathetic?" Chayote taunted the giant before leaping right at it. Just this once she did not move like a martial artist. The excitement of seeing an opponent this big and, potentially, this powerful just got to Chayote and she allowed herself the mistake of forgetting her basic combat training just so she could dash at this mountain and kick it around a bit.

Another missile stopped the Saiyan in her tracks. An almost identical clone of the hulking brute before her landed nearby his one-armed brother with an open mouth that, Chayote could have sworn seeing, hosted a massive hole, not unlike those in the tubes launching anti-aircraft blasts from earlier, except a tad more compact to fit within the giant's mouth, apparently.

[Not even you can defeat the Metallitron Squad], the brute spoke in a static, artificial tone, as if speaking through a voice of some other man that was being transmitted from inside in a rather lacking sound quality. Then again, it had an entire chunk of flesh and bones to work through to leave the mouth of the colossal brawler so…

"Your vests are pretty cool but way too big for me. Sorry, guys, unless I need a parachute, I'll pass." Chayote replied and dashed right at the handful of these newest enemies that have presented themselves.

A dull, yet sufficient to throw Chayote off her feet, blow sent the Saiyan crashing through a building hard enough to make the building collapse. There were soldiers inside, not that the Saiyan cared too much about the cowards using the confusing layout of the place to seek sanctuary inside one of the dozens of buildings in the military complex.

"I guess I should have figured a "squad" would include more people…" Chayote cackled like an excited child after leaping out from the rubble with a grin that covered the entirety of her face.

A stomping attack from another giant squished the Saiyan down and made her completely disappear under the foot of the attacking brawler. The bunch looked at the spot where Chayote was last seen before the stomp, their eyes fixed at her location as if the entire squad was under hypnotic control.

[Not even an attack like that killed her], the Metallitron with a dark green vest and blond hair declared in an identical, artificial voice.

[The enemy does not resist. Perhaps they've given up]? A Metallitron with a golden vest and eggplant-colored hair wondered in a voice that was as monotonous and single-note as that of his comrades. The content of the brutish soldier feeling curious could have only been picked up from the content of his words.

The Metallitron with its foot having squished Chayote into the pavement shook. It was about the only show of body language as even the facial muscles of these badass giants barely moved when they spoke. Only a few of the wrinkles by their cheeks did. Without much resistance from the attacker, Chayote flipped the behemoth over by standing up and pushing the leg pressing against her up.

"So what's your deal? Are you brothers or do you just wear themed outfits?" the Saiyan looked confused by the appearance of these odd enemies. While initially, she felt somewhat excited by the prospect of duking it out with them and maybe even letting them land a few blows just to see how strong they could get, the novelty was beginning to wane at the moment.

[Remarkable physical strength. Alien]? One of the Metallitrons wondered, marveling at the ability of the teen to flip over one of them with such ease.

Before the yellow-vested Metallitron could speak up, the titan stumbled back with a teen-sized hole in its chest while Chayote spun her fist about and marveled at the chaos of wires, steel plates, chips and electric sparks that she's caused. Having damaged something important in the mechanical giant, the Saiyan made the stumbling enemy blow up. It was a recurring theme of that day.

[Impossible…] the burgundy Metallitron exclaimed. The lack of emotion in his movements or even in him uttering that word may have seemed creepy to anyone who did not just take one of these mechanical soldiers out with one punch through them. Usually, when people exclaimed that sort of thing, they sweated profusely and stumbled back. This Metallitron and all those who weren't forced back stood their ground and merely observed their enemy as if absorbing the data that she'd been showing.

"Although… You guys did say something interesting about being able to register that I wasn't dead. I wonder about those shades…" Chayote smirked.

* * *

Screams became a part of the total routine for that day. Men taken out by the dozens in a blink of an eye, dogs howling while they were dispatched with a bit more softness to the blows, the deafening explosions resonating all over the place of the world's most advanced military technology announcing its failure against a great amount of brawn.

Colonel Violet did not expect the murderous Saiyan to reach the top floor of the vault so soon, however. She was beginning to foster false hopes of being able to run away with the most fun pieces of hardware stored in the Red Ribbon base and the seemingly infinite riches, however, the efficiency of the attacking force caught her with her pants down for the first time in her life.

"Hmmm?" Chayote hummed in a bemused tone after seeing the Colonel of the Red Ribbon with money sticking out of her pockets and bags of gold stacked around her while dozens of assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers and vintage revolvers stacked against the toughest walls amongst those that the Saiyan had to bust down yet.

"Damn it, I'm not letting you ruin this for me!" Violet yelled out before grabbing a grenade launcher by her side and flinging a handful of grenades at the Saiyan, mixing in incendiary and gas rounds into the barrage, hoping that one of these would do the trick.

"I guess this isn't where the cool tracksuits are stored…" Chayote blew the resulting smoke and fire out with a nonchalant breath. "I figured that these Earthlings would store their most valuable possessions at the top floor of their storage…" she scratched the back of her head.

"T-These are the most prized possessions of the Red Ribbon, the only more expensive one is the Battle Jacket and Commander Red's own revolver. But Commander keeps those to himself and I'm not walking into that hive." Colonel Violet spoke with a bit of defiance to her impending fate, one she heard her more foolish comrades meet not too long ago by the masses at the hands of this very unstoppable monster.

"But there's nothing but junk here…" Chayote sighed. The Saiyan just about prepared herself to execute the woman that had almost burnt down what little remained of the native warrior uniform of the Sacred Land of Korin that Bora and Upa gave her. "I'll never find the green tracksuits at this point, may as well blow this whole base up…"

"W-Wait! You mean the zip-ups that the soldiers use for the morning jogs, right? I'll tell you where they are if you let me leave this place. Also… What is that thing on your face?" the confused Colonel finally mustered up the strength to ask.

"Huh? You mean these primitive, Earthling scouter thingies?" Chayote pointed at the shades that may have been the size of her whole head and just barely stayed attached to her head. It was a bit difficult looting them off of one of the Metallitron units as it required defeating it without having the bastard detonate and it took Chayote multiple tries. As it turned out, these Metallitrons were much more durable than they were strong.

"Scouter?" Violet jerked her head to the side. Clearly, the term of this basic technology was beyond this primitive Earthling.

"Yeah. It's supposed to tell you someone's power level. These are garbage, however, one thing a scouter's supposed to do and these can't do that. They can just register life signatures and kind of assume their power. With how weak this army is, I can barely test if this thing works right or if I busted it by accident." Chayote sighed.

"I-I think you look just fabulous in these. I'm not sure who said that fashion goes around in circles but… Girl, you're rocking those babies!" Colonel Violet offered the confused Saiyan her thumb up before slowly making her way with all of her loot toward the door. "Come on, let's get you dressed up in something REALLY cool."

* * *

"Damn it! DAMN IT!" Commander Red slammed his hands against the desk before flipping out and flipping the table, symbolic to his mental state. The shorty stared at the images transmitted by the Metallitron Squad that had gone offline one after another. The image of a spunky teenage girl with a tail would haunt his nightmares if he survived to have any.

"This girl… Where on Earth did she come from?" Staff Officer Black grumbled. By now, both of the two men went through a rough day. While Commander Red appeared same as he did on a usual day, if a bit more sweaty and pissed off to no end, Staff Officer Black had completely collapsed and required the support of a table to stay on his feet, it seemed.

The second-in-command was serving every need of his Commander the whole day. Every single caprice, arguing to the last about every bad decision that his Commander came up with. Initially Black admired his superior's genius, after all, the leader of the Red Ribbon identified the enemy's threat level right out of the gate and sent everything he had at the right time. By all means, Red's strategies should have worked – use the Silver Corps as aerial support in sync with the ground units, combine every single Metallitron unit present in the base into a single squad and send all of them at once instead of waiting for the enemy to wander into each of them.

And yet…

With a mighty punch, the attacker blasted through the side and, in an instant, dispatched of every single one of the bursting from the lower floors guards that resorted to standing by their leadership to the bitter end. Granted, the folks had expected the attacker to come through the door and not that they'd have to rush after her, but such was the nature of combat – sometimes things did not go the way they were supposed to. This was only elementary in a field where deceit and thinking ahead was the key.

"Why are you attacking us!? What on Earth do you want!?" Commander Red jumped atop of the table that previously offered Staff Officer Black some support while he gestured at Chayote. Standing atop of a table was the only way that the Red Ribbon's leader could stand taller than the young woman that had decimated his forces and sent Red Ribbon back to its infancy stages, postponing their plans to collect the Dragon Balls by decades.

"I thought there was nothing on this planet that I wanted…" Chayote smiled with far too much kindness for someone as monstrous as she revealed herself to be that day. "However… I've come to find out that there are things here that are more exciting than even Planet Vegeta… Martial arts, cool clothes, fighting tournaments and… I've even seen another Saiyan once in a vision of my future. I can't help but wonder what sort of insane stuff is still out there. It makes electricity pass through my tummy to even imagine!"

"Planet Vegeta? So you're an alien of some sort? Screw the army, how about you work for us? Help me gather the Dragon Balls and I'll make it worth your while, any kind of clothes you want, any kind of weaponry. You said you're from another planet, help me take over the world and I'll have Dr. Brief himself build you a spacecraft. Damn, who even needs Dr. Brief, we have our own genius scientist working just outside North City!" Commander Red looked calmer than he did before. He had figured that his offer was simply too good to refuse. This was how he got himself to the top of the food chain, by listening and then giving people what they wanted until he himself had surrounded himself with people mighty enough to take whatever he wanted without offering anything in return.

"Cool clothes and a journey back home sounds fun. Have you offered this to me a couple of weeks earlier, I may have been tempted." Chayote shrugged. Beginning to put together where this was going, Commander Red began taking careful steps back, trying to make a bit of distance between himself and the alien invader. "I may have even considered allowing you work for me, maybe have you guys join the Frieza Army eventually but… You're far too weak to be of any use to me, let alone Lord Frieza."

"Why you!" Staff Officer Black completely lost it, charging at the Saiyan who was elevated in calmness by the pile of bodies, rubble, and fires she had left behind her. The teen moved her head aside, dodging the blow while she thrust her knee right into the groin of the last man daring to resist her siege. Sounds both shrieking and gurgling in nature followed Staff Officer Black all the way to the atmosphere, although anything past the moment when the man busted through the roof of the central hub and snapped his neck as well as shattered his skull in the process was just an echo.

An explosion opened up the top floor to the outside as one of the aircrafts lingered atop of the busted central hub offering a rope ladder to anyone willing to take it. With his vintage, gold encrusted revolver with a wooden handle in hand, Commander Red tried suppressing the Saiyan while he made his exit. The teen barely registered the bullets, even if they were larger and faster than most she's been attacked with that day. Still, what stopped her in her boots the most was the fact that Red actually thought he'd get away like that.

"Kinto!" Chayote yelled out while she leaped up. She figured that since his enemy was so slow and pathetic in his wriggling retreat, she may as well have played with her food a tad bit.

After the Saiyan had elevated herself to where she got a bird's eye view of the devastation she wrought, a loud pop followed by colorful clouds up ahead demanded her attention. A blue, mechanical suit began plummeting at high velocities from where Commander Red used to hang. A difficult to make out, dwarfish shape took a wild dive down and entered the mechanical suit that used jets to break its fall and prepare for a pilot taking their seat in its pit.

"Red Ribbon Battle Jacket…" Chayote recounted what her oversized set of shades told her. The blue mechanical suit floated in mid-air before leaning forward and showing off a massive missile on its back.

"Disappear with the entire base! To Kingdom Come with you!" a mechanized version of Red's voice preceded the launch of the deadly missile. Chayote knew that the missile would be trouble because it had a red end at the tip, that meant that whoever was making it tipped the enemy off this meant business!

"Commander! This will blow us out of the sky!" the pilot manning the aircraft that Red was just retreating in yelled out but the resulting nuclear cloud of decimation drowned out the pleads of the dying to consider the worth of their lives.

Only a massive crater of ashes and cinders remained of what was once the headquarters of the Earth's strongest military. The floating, slightly dirtied and banged Battle Jacket posed in its might, having survived the town-ending blast. When the Battle Jacket was being built, it, without a doubt, was built considering that nothing could have survived such excessive weaponry and it was given such weapons of untold destruction not because they would ever be needed but out of symbolic value alone.

"Ha ha ha ha! Take that, you alien filth! Nothing survives the Battle Jacket! Everything of worth has been preserved, the Red Ribbon is victorious! I don't really even need the Dragon Balls to make my wish come true. The Battle Jacket makes me both tall and strong enough to shut everybody up! Although… Not as handsome… Back to the drawing board then, handsomeness is a must…" the Battle Jacket entered a contemplating stance, completely ignorant of the Saiyan floating above it. By the time that Commander Red stopped ignoring the life signal warning beeps, it was all too late.

"Lima Spear!"

With her palm strike ready and wound up, Chayote was diving down and collided with the center of the Battle Jacket, busting it open and splashing waves of Red's blood by just thrusting her open palm into the previously thought invincible battle bot. The mechanical suit began glowing with surges of salad-green Ki as it spiraled down and then detonated in an explosion matching the previous one in power but massively dwarfing the clean nuke before in sheer compressed power.

After the debris cleared out, it became crystal clear that there was much less left of the mountain range that once protected the Red Ribbon Army from an attack coming from the north. Not that it mattered, given how the base that the kilometers of ruthless mountain range disappeared a bit after the base it was supposed to protect did.

Chayote looked on to the south-east. She still had a couple of years before Korin told her to go to Papaya Island and meet his pupil for some more martial arts training. What seemed previously like a curse and a prison to the unwilling Saiyan, deprived of Heaven, proved to be a rather exciting new bag of possibilities. Given how she'd eradicated thousands of bad people all at once, she was now ahead of the schedule and had a few more months all to herself.

It was a close one though, she very nearly killed that nice lady with violet hair that showed her where the cool tracksuits were… Chayote just wished that Upa was here to help her tell the bad from the good. Then again, if she kills too many good people, she can always just change her mind and wipe everyone out. Shouldn't take more than one blast to wipe the whole surface clean. The worth of the planet would plummet though, enough for some space rock so distant from any of the nearest Frieza Army sectors to be rendered worthless and Chayote aimed to please after her previous fiasco during the test.

"Go, Kinto, let's see what else we can do until the time comes!" Chayote raised and pumped her fist up into the sky. The best thing about magic clouds was that they did not need a second request – the Dark Kinto split the clouds with a violent burst of speed after the first one. At this point, the Saiyan was unsure if the smile on her face was due to immense speed she was traveling in or because of how excited she was about what else Earth had to offer.

Oh, what difference a change of perspective makes!

* * *

**Author's Note: I've received a note stating that some of the readers have caught up with one of my stories and we can't have any of that, can we? Anyway. There goes the first, Land of Korin Saga of Paradise Lost. Can't believe that my interest of mashing my keyboard to put the rest onto a doc file that I then can copy/paste on is just as vivid as it was when I started, then again, I still feel passionate about Tales of a Ninja Magician even though I've been working on it for YEARS now. Hopefully, it's a sign of me finishing this story and, hopefully, it won't be even half as long as probably half-finished TONM :D**


	10. The Awful Start to an Awful Good Time

Arriving at Papaya Island the day that the World Martial Arts Tournament began was the first time that the Saiyan saw this many Earthlings in one place. During the time-off she had to travel the world and learn a bit about this planet she's stuck on Chayote had seen cities before. She had also seen large temples that, from the first sight, looked like perfect fighting arenas but they seemed to attract the Earthlings for religious reasons and because of how excited the locals were about fighting.

Over her time away Chayote figured that Earthlings did not care too much about fighting. Nothing in this strange culture was solved through fighting, judging from what little she's seen of the King, he was not even that much of a fighter. While the Saiyan was not entirely sure about that conclusion but it seemed like power was not acquired through being the most powerful on this planet. The jury was still out on just how one became the King of this planet. Perhaps while she's waiting about for the Frieza Army to find her Chayote could try being a King for a little while, just for fun.

"Are you a contestant?" a chubby man with a traditional outfit not too much different from the outfits that the monks in the temples Chayote's seen wore asked. The man with the rich mustache line sat by a shoddy table with a massive pile of papers stacked in front of him.

"I suppose so. I'm here to fight." Chayote raised her fist. She spared the man of any excitement in her expression, saving it for someone who was the more correct witness to it.

"In that case, what's your name, I'll sign you up." The man revealed his purpose to Chayote.

"I'm Chayote. Say, did a kid, similar to me in a way, sign up? A guy with spiky black hair and a tail?" the Saiyan asked the monk in charge of registrations.

"A kid… Yeah, two kids signed up. Weird, huh? Some old guy signed them up, what kind of a grandpa would do this to their grandsons? You think it's some sort of a cruel prank? Must be some sick old geezer!" the monk rubbed his hair while struggling to keep his little hat from falling off of his head.

"Hey, hey! What's the hold-up!?" a boar-man hybrid walked out of the line and brandished a knife at the two conversing in front of the registration.

"Sir, sir, weapons are forbidden at the tournament!" the monk stood up and began frantically shaking his hands in front of himself in an attempt to calm the rogue down.

Even the gust of wind that picked up after Chayote's blitzing movement failed to keep up with the Saiyan as she approached the bandit and smacked him right in the face with a careless, backhanded slam. Even when she barely put any effort into it, choosing to preserve her stamina for the tournament, the Saiyan killed the rabble-rouser effortlessly.

"K-Killing is also forbidden at the tournament!" the monk pointed at the lifeless man with a snapped neck. "It's okay, that guy was coming at us with a knife, it was self-defense!" the monk explained to a pair of law enforcement officers approaching the scene.

Chayote had seen those men and women in blue doing their thing on her trips. While the sentiment of well-trained rule enforcement order was a novel idea that the Saiyans may have considered instead of leaving all that to fun albeit constant power struggling, the young Saiyan found those police officers to look awfully weak. How could they possibly uphold the law when they could not even kill those breaking the rules.

"It's okay, I'm a police too." Chayote raised her thumb pointing up.

"H-Huh?" the police officers leaned forward in confusion. "Aren't you a contestant at the tournament?"

"That too, yes." Chayote nodded.

"But then you can't be a police officer because you'd have to be patrolling instead of fighting." An officer with side-split, spiky, grey hair pointed out with a smug face made so due to what he deemed infallible logic. "Plus, you're not wearing a uniform, I'll let you know, young lady, that impersonating a police officer is a misdemeanor. You won't be able to fight from inside the slammer, huh?"

The two officers chuckled to one another. While they looked to be threatening Chayote with something the Saiyan could not entirely understand, they did not look to be all too serious about it.

"Slammer? That sounds like a fun place. Maybe I'll check it out after the tournament." Chayote shrugged. "So you must be wearing the uniform to be a police?"

"Why did you claim to be a police officer if you don't even know what one is!?" the younger and more fit-looking officer flipped out at Chayote.

"I assumed that killing bad people was all there was to it. I do like your uniforms though. Might give it a whirl after the tournament…" the Saiyan shrugged with childish innocence gleaming from her eyes as she followed where the monk pointed her to. A place where something called "the Preliminaries" would be taking place.

"Attention! All contestants participating in the tournament! Qualifying rounds will soon begin in the competition hall!" a dark-skinned man that reminded Chayote of that one brave Red Ribbon officer that confronted her despite being an utter weakling declared. For a short spark of a moment, the Saiyan wondered if this man belonged to a warrior tribe of some sorts but he looked far too puny to have that much alike with Staff Officer Black.

A loud grunt made the Saiyan freeze in bemusement. A short and frail old man in a monkey suit was staring over at Chayote from the other side of the large square, bustling with people. The Saiyan looked back at the old man. It was tough to tell what he was thinking through his large, sacramento-green shades although Chayote was the one to speak. She wore her primitive scouter shades for the longest time before they got busted three weeks ago.

"Got a problem, old man?" Chayote yelled at the geezer staring at her from the other side of the hall. She wondered if the old-timer even heard her over the number of bustling people and his likely impaired hearing.

"Come on, master, this is no time to stare at pretty girls!" a baldy in a cute, blue monkey suit of his own and a stockman hat pulled on the clothes of the gawking old man. The baldy stood beside another kid about his size but Chayote failed to make out too many details since the second was standing with his back turned against her and was partly covered up by sightseers and people waiting around for the fighting to begin.

"I see… So the Earthlings do find enjoyment in fighting but just as a sport…" Chayote observed, losing attention in the curious three. It was only then that the idea popped into her head that the trio was comprised of an old man and two younglings, just like the monk by the registration told her. This had to be the Saiyan she's been so excited to meet but why was he hanging around a bunch of Earthlings and hadn't killed them yet?

Maybe he was handicapping himself like Chayote was? After all, Saiyans did think in a somewhat predictable manner given their simple minds. Even if she disliked species profiling, Chayote had to admit that some of the stereotypes had more truth to them than one could dismiss. Namekians were creepy weirdos, Gelboians were all girly folk with admittedly fabulous hair, Saiyans liked fighting…

It was not that Chayote liked thinking in these offensive ways but she had never met a Saiyan that disliked fighting of a bald Gelboian and that was all that she was saying to herself by that.

"Damn it, lost the three over my stereotype sensitivity!" Chayote snapped her fingers trying to locate where the three may have gone. Given how the qualifying matches were where the tournament fighters were all supposed to be, the Saiyan figured that her chances at finding the three would be the greatest there.

For such an impressive location, brimming with tradition and epic feel, the location where the qualifying matches took place looked like a pathetic straw shack. Chayote felt hesitant to even power up in such a measly stage or else she'd have blown the entire thing down like a stack of untied hay in a hurricane. The novelty of seeing this many martial artists all around her did not disappoint the Saiyan however. Even if very few of them looked worth her time, even the weaker looking ones made Chayote skip a few breaths and blush a bit when imagining the fun times she would be having around these parts.

"This is not where I've seen meeting the Saiyan boy. That means that he would be proceeding through the qualifying matches. May as well not waste my time looking for the needle in a haystack and just have some fun…" Chayote pondered to herself.

Another monk who looked like was going to die of old age if allowed to finish his speech walked up on one of the multiple rings where the qualifying matches were to take place. A metallic stand with a gadget of some sorts on top stood in front of him, the purpose of which was a mystery to the Saiyan, though when the monk opened his mouth to speak up, it became much clearer for the Saiyan. She liked the idea of a volume enhancing gadget though she'd never had such a problem, her lungs were simply much more powerful than those of this geezer.

"This year we have a total of 137 masters from around the world, from whom only eight will be allowed to enter the final rounds. This year we will truly be honored by a very fierce competition indeed. For five years contestants have trained and waited for this opportunity to compete for the title of "Strongest Under the Heavens". You have journeyed here from all corners of the Earth. I will explain the competition's rules so listen well…" luckily for his future lifespan, it did not appear like the old-timer was planning on concluding his speech anytime soon. Not so luckily, he had lost Chayote at "listen well", the Saiyan just hoped that she had gathered the necessary basics from the scared monk outside by the registration.

Prompted by the outright ancient monk to do so, Chayote drew her number from the box and stared at it. She was not entirely sure what drawing "32" meant but by checking the massive board of numbers and drawn lines and brackets she was able to piece together the fundamentals of how this competition worked. Things were much more simple when displayed on brackets and lines instead of being explained by a man whom nobody had yet told he had died of old age forty years ago.

"32 and 28, please make the way into the ring!" a new announcer in a light blue shirt and a bow tie yelled out. He had to try his hardest to outdo all the noise in the place as multiple blocks had their qualifiers at the same time.

"Well, guess I'm up…" Chayote got onto the ring. In front of her stood a half-bare and relatively strong-looking man in about his forties. He did not look like much of a warrior since he had not earned the right to wear any ceremonial clothes. Then again, maybe he just abandoned his ceremonial uniform because of how much of a badass rogue he was?

"This just feels cruel. I'll give you a chance to give up." The man declared before entering a wide fighting pose. His stance made sense, he was a large man in both size and thickness. He had the height and the girth to own a wide-guard stance and utilize it well.

"Begin!" the announcer allowed the two to take shots at each other. The man lunged at Chayote, possibly infuriated by how she did not take his advice and run away. Number 28 threw a palm strike at the Saiyan that threw the teen's face back. In a rather unnatural manner, the Saiyan collapsed on her back right where she stood, without taking a step back.

"Heh, she's done! Poor kid should have run away when she had a chance!" a brawler spectating the fight with a mohawk pumped his fist into the air.

"No." an old man with a full white beard and mustache and a ridiculous hairdo that did not quite match the color of his facial hair. And yet, the man had the serious and analyzing eyes of a true warrior that seemed the most in touch of the truth in the heart of battle. "She is a scary monster in a tight body."

"Huh?" the mohawk fellow turned at the old man. "A frail-looking woman, an old man, I've heard that Block 3 has a bunch of actual children fighting. The World Martial Arts Tournament simply isn't what it used to be anymore…" the man joked.

"Kids?" Chayote's head popped back before the young woman returned to her standing position. "So that's where the Saiyan boy is… Block 3."

Something about the old man attracted Chayote's attention. The grim seriousness in his eyes and the brimming power inside of him, the technical prowess, the maturity, everything remarkable about this individual leaked out right in front of the Saiyan. It called out the same kind of challenge inside the Saiyan as well. She knew what this old timer was doing – he was calling on every ounce of his Ki, brimming with the most serious deadly intent to bring her down just to see how he stacked up to where Chayote was in her playing stage so Chayote answered the man's challenge while the two waged a mental battle with one another, their gazes clashing like two waves at the opposite side of a stone, each desperate to wash it the other's way and push it out of its way.

"Mercy!" the martial artist that Chayote was fighting surrendered with red, broken and swollen arms. The Saiyan had not noticed when she built up her power level to remarkable enough stages where the punches and kicks of her opponent no longer even registered. Somehow she's stared down at the old man through her qualifier battle. That wasn't good, if her opponent was less of a pathetic weakling, she'd have been in trouble for letting her attention wander off like that.

"Just who are you?" Chayote heard a mental signal inside her mind. It was the old-timer, there was no doubt about it.

"You're Muten Roshi, right?" the Saiyan turned at the only martial artist in her block worth a damn, as much as her premonition could tell her.

"Be quiet, in this guise, I am Jackie Chun. I am surprised I have never heard of you yet you are able of raising the hairs on my back without even trying. You had to force yourself to lower yourself to the level where these martial artists would be able to hurt you and where you would not be able to kill them outright. There cannot be such a person in this world that I have not heard of!" Muten Roshi, or Jackie Chun, kept on talking in Chayote's mind.

"Damn, I kind of wish that Korin taught me this trick, it's kind of cool!" Chayote smirked while watching the first round of the qualifiers transpiring.

"K-Korin, you say?" Jackie Chun lost his guise of cool as he turned at Chayote while he sent her the mental message. "So, you've been trained by Korin, that explains it…"

"56… Could you please make your way onto the ring already!?" the announcer lost his voice trying to yell it loud enough for Jackie Chun to hear it. The old-timer smiled with a goofy façade while stumbling his way onto the ring, in front of his bestial opponent that looked not too much different from the one Chayote had faced except for the fact that he was the type of Earthling that looked like a humanoid animal. This one was somewhere in the middle between a fox and a bear.

"Sorry, sorry…" Jackie Chun rubbed his ridiculous hairdo. Chayote was not quite ready to declare it was a wig but all she was saying to herself was that it in no way matched the rest of the man's body hair. "Hearing really just gives up at my age…" the old man chuckled, playing a weak fool when in fact he was just about the only notable martial artist around.

"What was that trick there, girly? One second you were getting kicked around, the other your skin got all hard and you broke the guy's hands without even trying!" the mohawk fighter in a pink dogi harassed the Saiyan. It really played up on the innate desire to kill the man within Chayote but he was not particularly evil, over the last couple of years, the Saiyan had learned that there was a bit of a difference between annoying and evil.

"I didn't do anything. The real trick was before that. When I weakened myself to where that weakling could hit me." Chayote closed her eyes and decided to just breeze through this vexing conversation with a person barely worth teaching about Ki to.

"Huh? Why would you do that? I feel a fancy, made-up story coming!" the mohawk guy laughed to himself.

"If you must know. I'm not sure which ones of you can even survive a single punch from me. I can't tell if a punch from me will make you explode or if it will just tickle you. I just adjust my strength as I go along, according to the strength my enemy shows me. Truthfully, this tournament seems like a joke, playing by its rules is the only real challenge here, frankly, it's a little fun." Chayote smirked to herself.

"56! You can stop punching your opponent now, he's beaten! You've won, I repeat, 56 won!" the announcer tried pulling Jackie Chun off of the whited out opponent.

Chayote opened her eyes and looked up at Jackie Chun's sweating and frustrated expression. He was visualizing what he sensed of Chayote's strength inside the man he was facing and he did not like the outcome with the image sparring session partner that he decided to visualize instead of fighting the enemy at hand.

The rest of the qualifiers were a breeze. Chayote faced a blind man with an interesting style of boxing that emphasized clever use of his limbs. Had the man been of twenty times his power level, Chayote would have truly enjoyed fighting him but with his current strength, the Saiyan just let him punch and kick her about just to see some more of his amusing style in action before dispatching of the man with a knee strike that she mirrored from his style.

That was just about the only use of these qualifying matches. Korin trained her in the basics of martial arts, the breathing, the movement. This was just like a supermarket of different martial arts styles, various strikes and submissions to choose from. It did not appear that anybody here knew any remarkable techniques but they had excellent fundamentals that dwarfed Chayote's. While she breezed through the qualifiers, it had been a humbling experience. One of adoption and self-reflection. It did not strengthen the Saiyan in terms of power level, it did not teach her much new of skills or challenge her nearly enough to grow that much but it gave her plenty of polish as well as some new moves to her own style.

"You don't look like a bad person." Jackie Chun spoke using his voice now. Saying it once Chayote walked off the ring having just downed an eight-meter tall rikishi. The man took great pride in his flabby skin and endurance and while any normal martial artist would not have generated enough force to bust through it, Chayote could juggle the man like an apple if she wanted to.

"How do you know? Maybe I'm the worst?" Chayote turned at the old timer with a smirk. She could not wait to fight this man. Even though no matter how many matches she went through, he did not come that much closer from the other end of the block.

"A bad person would not study this much, they would not assume that there is something they can still learn at your level. You're green, don't get me wrong, but you know that." Jackie Chun turned his glance at Chayote with a much more prominent sense of calm. His eyes before almost felt like the geezer considered Chayote a threat to his entire world and perhaps rightfully so.

"I've only learned martial arts exist a short while ago. Before I could have never guessed there's an entire art this deep to what seemed as clear-cut as fighting. Seeing all these guys do their best, it's exciting. If they were as strong as me too, I'd never win against them in a thousand years!" Chayote clenched her shaking fists in excitement. "And you… You're the most exciting one of them all. You've got decent enough power and speed, I can sense it from you. But you're also a genius of martial arts too."

"Hmmm…" Jackie Chun hummed on while he looked ahead.

"56, 56, could you please make your way into the ring!?" the announcer kept on yelling into his megaphone.

Because Chayote was looking on ahead, she missed out on Jackie Chun disappearing on her. For someone weaker than her, the man certainly had light feet. Why would he just up and leave before his match? What sort of a martial artist's trick was that?

"I guess he's off to take a nap or something… This can't go on… 56 is disqualified. The winner is 41!" the announcer ruled.

Chayote's eyes shot wide open as she turned behind her, her tail mirrored the frantic movements of her head in reverse directions to keep the proper balance. That was necessary since the shock of the old timer just leaving and getting himself disqualified nearly pulled the ground from under Chayote's feet.

"32, 32! I know you can hear me because I'm yelling right at your face with a megaphone!" the announcer leaned up to Chayote, just inches shy to where his voice-enhancing gadget rubbed against her face. "Please make your way to the ring before you're disqualified as well!"

That crafty old coot!


	11. The Lots are Drawn

"Hmmm… You have done well to stand up, young lady. But I will not underestimate you as your opponents did." A man of a darker tan and wearing loose clothes that Chayote could have sworn should have gotten in the way of swift movements declared.

"Your technique is interesting. I may give it a spin. Although it does not matter how fast you strike if your strength cannot faze your opponent." Chayote rubbed her jaw with her knuckle while she stood back up from the floor after not having taken too much damage. She was impressed with both the technique and the overall martial arts skill of her opponent. The Saiyan just wished that she could have fought this man in the finals and in a much larger arena. Also, perhaps, that he had at least five times the power level he must have had at the moment.

"Cannot faze my opponent you say? My Eight-Arm Fist seemed to do the job before…" the martial artist who appeared as cocky in his expression as he had every right to be declared. With a furious growl he leaped at Chayote, the Fighter No. 24 made his hands go blurry again, before long it appeared as if he had grown eight arms.

The man employed his newly manifested arms at attacking Chayote with a rush of fists. The Saiyan just stared at the oncoming attack in defiance and allowed the attacks to just bounce off of her now that she's actually started trying at about the level where she imagined her opponent being.

"W-What!? B-But my Eight-Arms Strike!" Fighter No. 24 trembled as he took a few dashes back in fearful respect. Chayote had to give this man some props, he did not break his arms attacking Chayote like the rest, then again, because of the speedy nature of his attack, he did not transfer all that much force into the teen either. Because of limited time, force and the contact surface, the Eight-Arms Strike appeared a flawed technique.

"You still don't get it, do you?" Chayote sighed. The Saiyan took a single step forward before her own arms disappeared just like those of her opponent did. "Ten-Thousand Fist!" she yelled out and, through great physical effort, her two arms split into branches that then split into more and more branches until ten thousand arms covered the entire ring, rushing at No. 24 from every possible angle.

Overwhelmed by the Saiyan's improvised use of his own technique, No. 24 placed a simple cross-shaped block in an attempt to, if not withstand the attack, then, at the very least, survive it. Much to the surprise of both No. 24 and every other fighter, of the very few that remained until the end of the preliminaries, No. 24 not only survived the "Ten-Thousand Fist" but also appeared relatively unharmed by it.

"It… It barely tickled…" the man admitted to himself and the shocked observers. Before he could turn back and face his opponent, Chayote was already up in the martial artist's face and delivered a single, primitive punch to the face. She did not even wind it up right, using the force from her shoulders instead of proper balance from the ground, as Korin had taught her.

"F-Fighter No. 24, ring-out! No. 32 qualifies for the World Martial Arts Tournament!" the announcer yelled into his voice-enhancing, handheld gadget after powering through the impact that seeing the champion of one of the previous World Martial Arts Tournaments fly across the entire building and very nearly leave it that way. A handful of confused and taken aback eyes that interested Chayote stared from across the building. She finally got their attention, good…

"She beat King Chappa," one of the remaining fighters trembled in his boots while observing the Saiyan step off of the qualifiers stage.

"Isn't he a previous champion? Just what kind of monsters are in this thing this year!?" an anthropomorphic tiger in a white dogi and wearing a black karate belt across his waist scratched behind his ear.

"Hmmm…" Chayote wondered. "Where did those brats go?"

She had wanted to check in with the other Saiyan brat and find out why the hell was he slipping on his planet conquering duties, also, if he knew anything about when someone from the Frieza Army may have shown up. It was a little bit surprising that they did not so far, this kid looked like he was in his early teens, it was about time for him to take this place over and wait to be picked up from the kindergarten, surrounded by bodies and ruin.

Then again, Korin's pot showed Chayote meeting this boy specifically which meant that until she faces Kami alongside this Saiyan, it was unlikely that the Frieza Army would find them. Something about this boy as well as the operation he was running here was out of the ordinary.

"The World Martial Arts Tournament will begin momentarily! Will the eight finalists please assemble in the main martial arts hall!" a muddled voice spoke through a megaphone, shortly after a jingle that invited a smirk on Chayote's face. No matter if she found him ahead of time or not, the two were destined to meet anyway. If the Saiyan could recall the pot prophecy right, the two would end up fighting each other in this very tournament at some point.

It was a poor equivalent to rocket science to identify the only boy in the room with a tail. Let alone the fact that the Saiyan hung out with some short and a bit plump baldy and some handsome guy with a red headband. The Saiyan boy looked to be overly happy about something, he was chatting his friend up like the two were casual acquaintances even.

"Hey, you!" Chayote tried getting the boy's attention but then something foul froze her in her boots. No matter how strong she thought she got, no amount of training could have prepared a person for this sort of paralyzing technique.

"Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Outta my way!" an abhorrent giant rumbled past Chayote, brushing aside the Saiyan with his shoulder. Being so close to the unpleasant cave troll, the young Saiyan collapsed onto the ground and began writhing in pain that resonated from somewhere in the back parts of her brain and spread like bad electricity all throughout. Every single surge sent needles through the neurons by tens of thousands.

"That stink!" the other Saiyan in the room appeared to be similarly affected by the man's sheer repulsiveness, the Earthlings looked quite crushed by the man's odors although nowhere near to the same degree as the two. Chayote had no doubt that had her fellow Saiyan been as close to the despicable individual and even brushed shoulders with him, he'd have crumbled down just as fine as she did.

"Wh-Who in the world is that… That giant…?" the plump and baldy Earthling that the Saiyan boy hung around looked by far the least crushed by the detestable aroma that filled the entire building just out of association with the giant of thunderous steps and a crashing lightning bolt of a body odor.

"He's one of the toughest fighters in the world. His strength is a legend among martial artists... But even more powerful is the stench that he developed by never taking a bath in his whole life…" the second friend of the Saiyan boy recounted. So this was the purpose of this Earthling. Now Chayote understood it a bit better, if she had a walking martial artist database around her, she might have let the fellow live a few more years, maybe even adopt him for the purpose of assisting the planetary conquest, giving him a lease on life as long as taking over his planet would take. It did not hurt that he was not unpleasant to the eyes either.

"Oh… Are you okay?" the slave of the Saiyan boy with a remarkable knowledge of Earth's most dangerous men and women noticed Chayote wheezing and panting on the floor. "I guess you're a finalist too then? My name's Yamcha."

"Chayote." The Saiyan replied while letting the adopted Earthling fighter assist her in getting off the ground. Even long after the dirty bastard left the building, his stench persisted. That was it, Chayote would kill that annoying gnat the next chance she gets. Maybe the tournament officials won't care if the two aren't actually fighting each other?

"Ah! I remember you!" the Saiyan boy declared, pointing his finger at Chayote with comically wide eyes.

It was about time that this Saiyan dropout showed a bit of respect for someone who was just inches away from being recruited into the Frieza Army itself. Chayote dug her chin and her nose into the collar of her tracksuit to try and power through the lingering stench.

"You're that awesome fighter in the qualifiers that sent that one guy flying!" the boy declared with enthusiasm. While he appeared to be an imbecile, his Saiyan genes were well on display. He enjoyed a good challenge wherever he saw one, even if this challenge was well over his head.

"It's truly remarkable to see beautiful women that can fight well too." The plump baldy nodded a pair of times. Chayote did not like his beady eyes, it suggested that he was fostering some dirty thoughts, then again, his shifty glares were switching from staring at Chayote to switching to some other Earthling woman behind her.

"What are you talking about, Krillin? This one's clearly a boy!" the Saiyan pointed his finger at Chayote, "Can't you see he has a tail? Girls don't have tails, just like they don't have pee-pees!"

As a testament of his scientific observation, the Saiyan boy patted at Chayote's crotch. Chayote's blush could have only been overshadowed by the collective shame of the Earthlings named Yamcha and Krillin. Then something snapped in Yamcha's mind as he paled out.

"W-Wait… Do you… In the full moon!?" he pointed at Chayote with his jaw dropping to the floor.

So this Earthling had experienced the Saiyan transformation into a Great Ape? Perhaps the boy Saiyan showed him, however, he looked too much like a goofy idiot to transform willingly, without someone teaching him and, as far as Chayote knew, she and this boy were the only Saiyans on this planet. A far more likely explanation would have been that he transformed by accident. But then… How did these Earthlings survive a Great Ape's rampage? Surely this brat could not have controlled himself in his transformed state, just like Chayote herself, this one looked like a low-class warrior.

"The full moon, what's he talking about?" Krillin looked at his Saiyan friend who just leaned back and shrugged.

"Dunno. I'm Goku." Goku grinned at Chayote.

"All finalists, please assemble! Hear me out here!" a different announcer from before wearing shades indoors declared. Chayote wondered if these shades were an upgraded version of the scouters that the Metallitron Squad had, adjusted for the normal size of this Earthling. It might have been useful to an announcer and commentator of a tournament to have that sort of a gadget.

Whatever the case was, Chayote ground her teeth about how she was robbed of a chance to talk to Goku and find out his situation. Sure, she could have hijacked this entire thing but the concept of a martial arts tournament was simply too precious to interrupt and sabotage. This here may have been the only reason to preserve the Earth, a tradition that may have been absorbed and enjoyed by the Saiyans even. Saiyans could have done it far better than Earthlings anyway…

"C-Could you please stay back?" the announcer muttered to the stinky giant who took a few moves back while chuckling to himself as if what he was doing was something to be overjoyed about.

Beside the previously mentioned fighters, the room also hosted a frail woman with a hairdo that matched the excess of the King Chappa guy that Chayote met during the qualifiers, a tanned individual that may have been from a nearby corner of the planet as Chappa as well and dressed with the same baggy rags, also a dinosaur. Chayote was not entirely sure what that last guy was doing there, she had killed too many dinosaurs already, in fact, they comprised most of her diet on Earth. Out of all these people, even one that belonged to a species Chayote killed and ate for sustenance, the young Saiyan wanted the stinky cave troll dead the most.

"Just who is this girl…" Krillin leaned at Yamcha while pointing at Chayote who was clutching at her nose and watering from her eyes. The manner in which her suffering manifested was nearly identical to that of Goku's on her left. "I thought Goku was one of a kind type of weirdo but she's just as strong, has a tail and reacts to things funny…"

"Don't know but… This suggests that there may be a whole tribe of people like Goku somewhere. Maybe Son Gohan stole Goku from them as a baby or something." Yamcha pondered, looking similarly baffled by Chayote's existence.

"We will now draw lots to determine the match-ups and fight schedules. When your name is called, please come forward and draw a slip." The announcer pointed at the board with numbers. Differently from the one from the qualifiers, this one had far fewer numbers and schematic aspects to it making it far easier to understand.

"Drawing lots and fighting, that's all there is to this tournament…" Chayote grinned. At least she liked fighting a fair deal making drawing and standing around less of a hassle.

"How will I draw when my hands are occupied…" Goku complained, still looking like something had hit him in the face with a decade-old fish.

"I'd like to kill that fatso." Chayote raised her hand, temporarily transferring the duty of blocking off her nose air intake to just one.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but no…!" the announcer shook his head. Flustered, he looked down at his papers. "O-Okay, then… I'll start calling your names. Uhhh... Nam-san." The announcer called out.

The rather unimpressive and frail-looking, tanned Earthling with baggy clothes responded before walking up to the announcer and drawing from the box. The man stared at the folded piece of paper as contemplating on its hidden meanings before unfolding it to the entire audience of finalists and declaring his number without much bombastic excitement to it.

"No. 2," he muttered.

The announcer leaned up to the large fighting board and wrote down Nam's name on it by the first clash. "You will be fighting first," he said before looking back down at his list of fighters, "Now, Kaiju Giran."

"Yo!" the monstrous dinosaur responded.

"Wait, this one has a name? I've killed so many of them, you mean they all had names?" Chayote scratched her head.

"What's that, shrimp, you're picking a fight?" Giran completely lost interest in drawing lots and began rolling up sleeves he did not even have to get all up in Chayote's face.

Yamcha and the group of monks present in the hall ran up to the two and began trying to keep a fight from happening. It took at least a good handful of recounts of the rules regarding contestants being forbidden to fight it out while on the tournament grounds except in the arena for Kaiju Giran to return to the box and draw his number. He growled and smacked the ground behind him with his tail the entire time as if attempting to intimidate Chayote. The Saiyan had seen the same intimidation mechanism from countless dinos she'd slain and eaten so she was not overly impressed.

"Number 8, match four." The announcer sighed after the hint of trouble breezed past with Giran leaving the building altogether, likely to get something crunchy to eat while thinking about how he should have eaten the rude, tailed teen that made fun of him.

"Bacterian…" the announcer called the massive, walking pile of waste to approach the box. The bastard looked gleeful all the way to it and made his best effort to muddy and stick up the papers inside it, without a doubt. "No. 4, match two." The announcer wrote down Bacterian's name on the board while clutching his nose with a hanky.

"Yamcha…" the announcer called out while finding the air around him breathable enough to pocket his saving grace at that moment. Chayote sent lightning bolts from her eyes at the abominable blob she now had a name behind.

"Yeah," Yamcha replied while approaching the stand and pulling out his number.

"No. 5, match three." The announcer spoke to himself as he wrote the results of the draw down. "Krillin."

"H-Here, Sir!" Krillin jumped up and rushed to the box, tripping over himself and planting his bald face firmly into the wooden floor but, much to Chayote's surprise, picking himself up and carrying him the rest of the way to his destination. While some around were cackling into their fists, namely the purple-haired female fighter that Krillin previously referenced, Chayote began to understand the role of this Earthling in Goku's group.

How could she have missed this previously? Goku cannot sense how strong his opponent is exactly either, that is why he requires a meaningless throwaway that he could fling at the enemy and measure their strength. Likely this baldy is somewhere around Goku's relative power level, else measuring using his round, thick head would be meaningless. If someone can beat Krillin – they're worth Goku's while.

What a devious strategist this Goku was. Chayote did not even doubt that he had much more to hide, Goku did not sound even remotely like a Saiyan's name, meaning that he made it up. His arrogance, however, would be his downfall for he underestimated Chayote's intelligence as well – he assumed that he was as much of an idiot as she took him for in the beginning, that was why he gave such a clearly fake name.

"No. 1, match one!" the announcer declared with vigor to his voice. Judging from his charisma alone, the Saiyan almost had it confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that this event would be shown publically with this man serving as a commentator of the fighting. That must have made him an impressive expert on the martial arts, similarly to Yamcha.

"Do not kill Yamcha when you take in this announcer as the expert of martial arts of your group." Chayote leaned to Goku's side. "I don't have one on my group so I'll take him under my control. He's easy on the eyes as well, won't hurt."

"Huh? You're weird…" Goku mumbled before laughing out in an honest and lively fit. He was a good actor on top of his top of the notch strategic mind. It was a good thing that Chayote killed Commander Red, he'd have been utterly useless in the face of Goku while the Saiyan had his alien strength on top of that.

"Um… Mago Gosora…" the announcer muttered to himself, hoping for a reply but nobody answered his call. "Are you present, Mago Gosora? That's odd… There seems to be the right number of people here."

Chayote looked around, she knew Yamcha, Goku, and Krillin, Bacterian, Giran, and Nam as well. She was fairly certain her own name was not Mago Gosora. She looked at the disinterested woman in a blue shirt and raised an eyebrow.

"That's not me," she replied with a hint of rude flippancy in her voice.

"That's okay, I understand if my parents called me that I'd be shy too but…" Chayote tried inspiring some courage in the fellow contestant just to speed this affair along but then Yamcha approached the announcer to save the day.

"Could you mean Son Goku?" he read off of the list that the announcer held.

"H-Huh?" the shades of the announcer lowered and very nearly dropped off his face forcing the man to correct them. "Is there a Son Goku here?"

"Here!" Goku even jumped up, bursting with life. It took no time at all for him to draw his number.

"No. 7, match four." The announcer read it to himself while he wrote it down. Now it made sense why this guy read things to himself, he could barely read and likely relied on noise memory to do his job right. Regardless of how useless this guy looked, he had a certain charismatic flair to him that made this man viable to become a jester in any respectable empire. Lord Frieza was nothing if not respectable. He would see the value of this man, Chayote was sure.

"Ranfan!" the announcer read off.

"Hiya, sailor." Ranfan pecked the thin air with a whole different kind of tone than the one she used when addressing Chayote earlier. While the Saiyan glared at her, the woman turned back and showed her tongue to Chayote as if reveling in the fact she was right earlier, during the whole Mago Gosora thing.

"No. 6, match three. And Chayote." The announcer read, even though her draw would be obvious, the Saiyan approached the box and drew it regardless.

"No. 3, match two. And so, the match order is now complete. The matches will proceed as follows: first match – Contestant Krillin VS Contestant Nam, second match – Contestant Chayote VS Contestant Bacterian, third match – Contestant Yamcha VS Contestant Ranfan, fourth match – Contestant Mago… Son Goku VS Contestant Giran." The announcer declared, leaving prolonged pauses in between each match for dramatic effect, or so one might have assumed.


	12. Bald VS Mysterious? The First Match!

"And so, that is the schedule. Each match will be one round with no time limit! If you fall off the stage or cry "Uncle" you will lose!" the announcer explained the rules of how the final rounds were going to proceed. "Also… Attacking the eyes or the sensitive areas will be a violation."

"What are the sensitive areas?" Goku wondered. Chayote found that question to be apt. After all, leaving something as major as a violation that might result in disqualification to such a vague description was just asking for trouble.

"In terms you might understand, it is your jewels." The announcer explained while leaning down on Goku.

"I have a question." Chayote stepped up. "What about our tails?"

"Tails?" the announcer peeked at the young woman before scratching the back of his head. Only then did the man notice the fact that Chayote had a tail.

"Yes. It is a… Sensitive area for Saiyans. Is it okay if nobody attacks us by grabbing our tails since we're giving out freebies here?" The Saiyan grumbled.

"Saiyans?" the announcer pulled out a handkerchief and began wiping his face with incessant passion.

"It's okay for me, I don't have a tail." Goku raised his hand. Chayote turned at her peer about to yell at him but only then noticed the fact that Goku was right – he was missing his tail. She spent so much time obsessing over what she had seen in Korin's water barrel that her brain had somehow automatically completed the picture of Goku with a tail. It was only when the youth pointed it out that Chayote noticed the boy's tail being missing.

Could he have not been a Saiyan? No way, Yamcha referenced too much knowledge about tails and Saiyans for Goku to not have had one. The expert on Earth's martial artists also displayed knowledge of the Great Ape transformation.

"Where did your tail go?" Chayote lost her cool. "How do you intend to conquer the planet without your tail?"

"Huh? I just woke up once and it was missing…" Goku laughed out while rubbing the back of his head, ashamed that he had managed to lose a whole appendage of his.

"Wait… Conquer the planet? I couldn't have been the only one to have heard that?" Krillin squinted while pointing his finger at Chayote. Apart from the short baldy, only Yamcha appeared to take interest in Chayote's words at all.

"Sorry, Contestant Chayote, if you are the only one with a weakness, we can't make it a universal rule. It would give you an unfair advantage!" the announcer declared.

"Serves you right, you just exposed a major weakness." Ranfan made a rude hand gesture by placing her hand in front of her forehead.

"I have a question too, when do we get lunch!?" Goku shook his hands in excitement while slobber drooled from his mouth. Due to the boy's short stature and more of a thick than tall build, it managed to reach the ground all the way from his mouth.

"Huh? You intend to eat before a fight?" the announcer raised his eyebrows but Chayote stepped in as well.

"If it's all the same, I wouldn't mind eating a decent Earthling meal as well," the Saiyan nodded. Finally, Goku reminded Chayote why she had taken him for a genius strategist conqueror in the making. He never appeared to forget to refuel his strength. It was an admirable trait.

"W-Well then, prepare these two a lunch, make one for all eight, who knows how many will decide to join in." the announcer turned to one of the staff monks.

"Krillin, won't you join in?" Goku turned to his friend. The baldy quivered.

"No way! My belly's buzzing too much to process food…" he said.

"You should be nervous. You look puny, you will get rolled over out there." Chayote nodded, affirming her declaration to herself with a confident nod while her tail flapped about in excitement for the upcoming meal.

* * *

It was fortunate that the monks prepared a meal for all eight, incorporating the massive body sizes of Kaiju Giran and Bacterian into the amount of food they had to make. It would have taken nothing less to even remotely fill the Saiyan duo's fulfillment fix.

"Wooow! I can't believe you managed to eat more than me!" Goku rubbed his blown out, like a balloon, belly.

"But of course, you somehow lost your tail." Chayote grumbled, feeling a tad bloated herself. "Who knows what effect that might have on your body. You should have known better, what on Earth were you thinking?"

This was the chance for her to have the talk with the boy, finally. The two were completely alone. Chayote gulped and leaned forward.

"You look at least in your teens. This planet does not pose much of a challenge. How come you haven't yet conquered it? I was shocked to realize there was another Saiyan here, I would have never expected it given how peaceful the planet seems." Chayote pointed her angry glare at the blown up boy in front of her who just writhed on the soft pillow he sat on while gorging himself.

"You keep on talking weird stuff. I don't get you sometimes…" Goku's expression got all flustered and annoyed. If she wanted to get this youth on her side, Chayote was doing a poor job of it.

"What are you talking about? Sometimes it seems like you don't even know you're a Saiyan, I swear to God!" Chayote growled back instead of backing off and stop being so confrontational. Then again, even when the girl was accused of being that, she usually punched the accuser in the face rather than backed off. Such was the Saiyan way.

"A what now?" Goku stood up and did some stretches.

"I can't believe it…" Chayote shook her head in disbelief. She had to stop talking, way too many questions raced to her mouth all at once, shutting the entire gate off by trying to push the others out of the way.

Was Goku a Saiyan? He must have been, the other Earthlings new way too much and attributed all of those Saiyan traits to Goku but… Goku was not a Saiyan name, the boy himself did not know nor did he acknowledge being a Saiyan even though he had the appetite, the wild hair and the passion for fighting of a Saiyan. Fighting… Chayote would need to see Goku fight before she could make an accurate shot at it. Right now, talking to this goof just raised too many questions.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your patience!" a thunderous declaration distracted Chayote and Goku. The two stood up and rushed toward where the voice came from, this time, however, Chayote did not feel robbed of the moment alone with Goku. She just felt confused and wanted to be around the shrimp a bit more so that she could understand what the hell was going on with him.

While Chayote took the boy for a Saiyan, almost certainly so, there were, in fact, more things going against that conclusion rather than for it.

"We will now commence the 21st World's Martial Arts Tournament!" the announcer spoke with previously unheard volume and might to his voice. This may have been due to the handheld gadget that he had. It made his voice as mighty and wide-reaching as that of the pilot of the Red Ribbon Battle Jacket, yet he could contain all that vocal might in the palm of his hand.

"A gadget that makes one speak really loud…" Chayote scratched her chin. "Earthlings invent the strangest things. Their military is so weak yet they waste time and effort on something so trivial."

"Are you talking to me?" Goku pointed at himself, his eyes shaking and looking a bit overwhelmed. "Because I've no idea what you're talking about."

* * *

"Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the first match is about to begin – Contestant Krillin against Contestant Nam!" the announcer recounted. "Remember that the champion of this tournament will be awarded five hundred thousand Zeni in prize money! But before the match gets underway, let's hear it from the presiding monk of the martial arts temple hosting this very tournament. May his wisdom guide our Contestants all the way to glory, like a staircase to the heavens, if you will… Honorable master, if you please…"

The announcer moved aside so that a short but stout monk could stand beside him. One that appeared remarkably similar to the canine pets that Earthlings bought, sold and sometimes used for battle, as Chayote recounted.

"This monk must be strong. I've faced his kind before and they have a stronger bite than most Earthlings. If this man has monk training, he might just be a worthwhile opponent…" Chayote nodded to herself.

"WOOF!" the monk barked into the microphone before walking off without looking back once.

"Thank you, thank you very much, truly the words of a great man!" the announcer smiled in a way that betrayed that he knew just how confusing and brief the speech was yet decided to act like the opposite was the case.

"You were saying?" Krillin cheeked at Chayote before his face paled out and turned blue on the spot. Rubbing his belly, the bald plumpy recalled that his match was up next.

"Now let the games begin! Both contestants please step forward!" the announcer gave the very intense declaration his all.

Krillin walked out still rubbing his fists against each other as if he meant to grind something between the two rock-hard surfaces. Nam, on the other hand, looked perfectly calm. Krillin actually made his way to the center of the arena first, in his steps Chayote noticed the need to get it over with. She sometimes approached trivial matters with the same attitude, like when she had to make the bed every morning before training could begin. A nasty tendency, for sure, was that she had always failed at the matters she tended to wish over with sooner.

"In the left, we have Contestant Krillin, who has entered the World Martial Arts Tournament at the tender age of thirteen. In the right, we have the intense and focused Nam!" the announcer yelled out into his noise-enhancing gadget.

"Why does he yell such obvious things into his gadget?" Chayote wondered. "The crowd can easily see who's in the arena."

"He's hyping them up." Yamcha's cheerful voice reached Chayote, the Saiyan turned back at the knowledgeable Earthling with confusion. "Plus, the tournament staff did not allow the crowd to observe the qualifiers, they might know less than you think."

"Huh? Why would you need to hype up fighting? It's hype already…" Chayote sighed. Some of the things Earthlings said and did still seemed lost on her.

"I suppose seeing the World Martial Arts Tournament if you are not too engaged in the arts of fighting does seem pointless." Yamcha laughed out while looking on at the match about to unfold.

"I'm rooting for you, Krillin!" Goku cheered on his pal from atop of one of the protective walls that separated the waiting building from the fighting arena.

The encouragement of his friend made Krillin a bit bolder, finally, the baldy found the fortitude to enter a fighting stance. His was an odd stance, it was neither particularly defensive nor offensive, it did not appear to enhance or prepare his body for much.

"Match one, begin!" the announcer declared the beginning of the fighting entertainment. A gong went off, declaring the beginning of the match in a more symbolic way.

Both of the two stood around in the initial stages of the match. Krillin was pissing his pants, Chayote could smell it. She had not yet had the chance to see much of this baldy but if he passed the qualifiers, at least, he should have been stronger than that "Eight-Arms" guy, at least so she presumed. Nam, on the other hand, was just not an aggressive fighter overall. He did, however, switch his stance once he realized Krillin was not about to attack him.

With a hand that appeared to be placed in a block, Nam dashed up to his opponent with aggression previously unseen in his face. This one was an oddball, he did not appear to take much enjoyment from fighting but when he did go out to a fight he unleashed all of himself out there, embraced all of the emotions he hated just to get it over with as soon as possible. Perhaps the two were closer to one another in terms of attitude than initially thought.

Krillin took the blow, Nam's transition from what seemed a defensive mock charge into a knife-edge chop at the boy's neck was flawless. This man had form, for sure. Krillin, on the other hand, he was stiff and completely frozen in his tracks when the timing was right to intercept. Then again, Chayote would have fallen for the first one too, the transition was just too smooth and she started the fight with too much of her power suppressed to measure her opponent up. The true fight was about what would develop from the chop onwards.

Nam shot his foot up, blasting Krillin into the sky like a football. Nam's bare foot let out a nasty thud when it met Krillin's face. Something that Chayote realized up front was how durable Krillin was, it was like his body was perfectly built for taking punishment. Even the initial chop may have beheaded a lesser person and knocked out a weakling but to Krillin, it was just another blow. This kick should have beheaded the kid outright but it just sent him floating with no visible damage on him.

"Contestant Nam opened up with a precise yet merciless combination of blows that has sent Contestant Krillin airborne! We are in for a show worthy of the final match right from the get-go, something tells me this will be one heck of a tournament!" the announcer did his best to hype the crowd up and he did not have to do much. He confused the deadly silence of disbelief in what the folks were seeing for disinterest. The moment that the two could make it out that Krillin was up and Nam was chasing after him, they cheered loud enough for Chayote to be taken aback.

They were not cheering for the violence. They had not seen an ounce of it yet. Not to mention the fact that they did not have a droplet of bloodlust in their reaction. Unlike the Saiyans, none of the Earthlings wanted anything to do with the battle they were watching.

Nam finished his pursuit of the airborne boy, Krillin threw a punch in mid-air, a sloppy one. It was like something made the kid keep it all to himself, all of the strength he may have had. Chayote wanted to see more from this friend of Son Goku's but she just couldn't because Krillin was locking his own potential up for whatever reason. Nam's image blurred and disappeared long before Krillin's lazy, turtle-pace punch reached him and appeared behind the boy, chopping him once again in the back of the neck.

This one connected and hurt. Krillin's stare turned blank for a second while the plumpy plummeted. Even Chayote, a battle-hungry Saiyan did not like the crunchy noise that his body made when he hit the ground and cracked the tiles that covered the arena. She could stomach this no longer.

"Say, Goku, didn't you two and Yamcha study martial arts under the same master, Muten Roshi?" she asked Goku.

"Well… Sort of. I and Krillin studied from the old geezer but Yamcha didn't," Goku shrugged.

"I self-trained, for the most part," Yamcha nodded.

"Then how come this kid knows nothing about martial arts? His stance is wrong, he even doesn't utilize his strength correctly and holds it back." Chayote growled while looking at the seemingly dead friend of Goku's.

"Begin counting…" Nam asked the announcer with a grim and all-business voice. This guy acted more like a hitman than Taopaipai even if the two were day and night in terms of skill and power.

"Very well… One, two…!" the announcer started counting. Judging from the volume of his voice, he was trying to wake Krillin up with his counting.

"Well, the old geezer didn't really teach us any real martial arts. We just kinda hardened our bodies and he taught me to read and count." Goku recounted. "Krillin is really good, he just doesn't trust himself yet…" the goofball grinned.

"Three… Four!" the announcer went on.

"Come on, Krillin!" an irritating voice came from somewhere in the stands where the crowd was. It was overpowering to the rest of the chatter. If Chayote's vision was not failing her, the voice belonged to one of the anthropomorphic animals that mixed and mingled between the more humanoid Earthlings. Even her limited knowledge of the Earth's fauna let her recognize a pig when she saw one.

"Don't give up, Krillin!" a blue-haired girl in a red and white t-shirt yelled from the stands, nearby the pig. The two looked quite invested in the fighting, more than it may have been customary for Earthlings. They must have been familiar to Goku.

"Five… Six!" the announcer was about ready to ring in the final moments for Krillin's chances in this tournament.

"You can do it, Krillin!" Goku raised his fist up with a grin, it was almost like his useful asset was not right now sprawled out in the ring, face down after eating a mouthful of tiles and dirt.

Krillin's muscles twitched before the plumpy gathered himself together and dusted his dirty uniform. This time he entered a much more offensive, positioned sideways with the right side up front while the left was reserved for defensive inputs, stance. This was more of a martial arts stance, one that Chayote would have called a decent one, even. This was not something taught by this Muten Roshi.

"Oh! Contestant Krillin has stood up and declared intent to keep going without saying a word! It appears that the cool and mysterious nature of Contestant Nam has soaked itself into Contestant Krillin through his blows!" the announcer spoke to the audience.

"Krillin studied in a martial arts temple, that's how he knows martial arts," Goku smirked at Chayote.

"And you?" she wondered.

"My grandpa taught me!" he declared.

His "grandpa" that must have been the key to all of this. Before the end of the tournament, Chayote needed to figure out what the hell was wrong with Son Goku and if any of his friends were useful.

"Do you know those two?" Chayote pointed with her chin at the sources for the energetic cheers in the front row of the audience.

"Oh, you mean Bulma and Oolong?" Yamcha smiled, "Yeah, they're friends of mine and Goku's. I should be more surprised that you don't know who Bulma is but… If you're anything like Goku, I'd be more surprised if you did know. She's the daughter of Dr. Briefs, the mastermind behind the capsule technology."

"Hmmm… So her father is an inventor, a tech wiz is certainly useful for the conquest of the planet and a pig is useful when food supplies run low. Maybe Goku's been assembling his squad these past years, that was why he made so little progress in wiping Earth clean?" Chayote wondered to herself.

"The fighters are staring each other down, normally, I'd say that stares can't kill but with these two… We may never know!" the announcer kept responding to escalating levels of hype around the audience. The first match was about to really heat up.


	13. Foundations of a Grudge Match

Without the need of a declaration to continue the bout, Krillin darted off at his opponent, headfirst. Nam blocked Krillin's strikes but Chayote noticed that his eyes were trembling – he was in pain. He could not just block the little plumpy's attacks with just his palms. If the scraps of martial arts that Korin showed Chayote were right, it was of no surprise that Nam struggled – he attempted to block force with force of his own.

The more successful application would have been to work with the opponent's force against them, everybody knew that. Everybody except Nam.

Krillin did not cease with just the few first blows. He was a shark that had just smelled blood and Nam certainly looked like the man bleeding into the waters. The previously cool and composed combatant leaned back, pushed that way by Krillin's ruthless advances. Goku's friend had skill, he was knowledgeable of martial arts before taking in whatever it was that Muten Roshi taught him. That was not to say that Muten Roshi was a bad mentor, just that his kind of training appeared to be meant for building up power level, not skill.

"Disappointing…" Chayote mumbled to herself.

"Hmm? I think Krillin's doing pretty good…" Goku turned at the Saiyan with a curious glare. He had missed Krillin landing the first strikes, after the audience's cheers, the boy turned back and cheered on his friend some more.

"Not this. Your friend is decent. It's just that… I looked up to meeting Muten Roshi for the last couple of years and there was no use for it. Muten Roshi's training is meant to build up power level, not teach martial arts." The Saiyan sighed. "May as well better check out the temple Krillin's been hardened in."

"That's not true." Goku shook his head. "Old timer didn't teach us actual martial arts but he taught us a lot of things about how to become better martial artists."

For the second time, Goku regretted turning his head away from the fight as Krillin had managed to knock Nam on his back and then took a soaring leap into the heavens to conclude the battle with a knee-strike from up above. Nam was not about to keep lying down and take it, with a windmill swing of his legs the man wrangled back up on two feet and then dived aside from Krillin's finishing blow.

Krillin, however, was one step ahead of that still, the little roll of dough did not land with his knees out front but his feet, then he repurposed his momentum into a dash to chase after Nam. Just as it seemed like Krillin's headbutt would shake the entire arena, the plumpy rolled in mid-air and pushed out his left leg up front. Nam blocked it, the force of the kick made him slide all across the arena to the very edge of it, lingering on being knocked out of bounds. His bare feet must have suffered some damage due to that slide as well.

The problem was that Krillin had run out of moves. He was winded in the middle of the arena, knowing full well where he had failed.

"You are an impressive opponent. I did not expect to hit this sort of wall so early on." Nam finally shed his shroud of silence and cool by admitting something that seemed obvious – this was not the walk in the park he had counted on this fight being.

"Heh, it felt freaky, walking out in front of so many people, fighting crazy guys like you but… I think I've come to realize that… I'm strong enough!" Krillin affirmed his somewhat shaky confidence. His voice was still shaking, he may have been quivering more than the kid let on to but the top fighting condition needed a bed of needles underneath.

"Care to test that theory? We could trade punches for quite a while, you're that tough. Let us settle this for good!" Nam declared while taking his exotic fighting stance with a right arm raised and bent in front of his balanced body.

"Sure, just a bit of warning, I was winded when I kicked you last time. This time's for real!" Krillin smirked while leaning back and preparing to deliver another diving kick. Without needing any extra encouragement, the boy kicked off the ground and twisted his body around to position himself just right for his kick.

"Cross-Arm Attack!" Nam yelled out while charging forward with a dive of his own. One that was performed head first with Nam's arms positioned like an X right in front of his head, like an arrow almost.

"Is he mad? You can't block a kick like that!?" Chayote exclaimed. She may have been seeing it but believing it was a whole different case entirely.

"You can if your arms are hard enough…" Goku shook his head with a serious look. "This guy's for real, I wonder if I'll get to fight him…"

Deafening silence overcame the arena. Then a thunderous thud to brush the comfort of silence right out like a violent tsunami crashing against the rocks and washing the long prospering moss off. After the resolution of the clash of blows, Nam was the only person standing with two swollen arms that looked somewhat jerky in their movements. Krillin laid flat on the ground, sprawled out, his mouth hanging open.

"I shall begin count…" the announcer declared by himself this time but Nam stopped him.

"Not yet. This boy is tough enough to stand up, I am afraid. For the well-being of my villagers, I cannot afford to hold anything back…" the determined man soared into the sky, disappearing like a shimmering star at least fifty meters into the sky before repositioning himself into another Cross Arm Attack but this time employing the force of gravity to his side.

"I apologize, you will sleep for ten days after this. Cross Arm Dive!" Nam declared while crashing down at Krillin with both his arms crossed up. Like a brutal guillotine, Nam's Cross Arm Dive hit the plumpy right at his neck. Nam grunted in pain as he had put too much pressure onto his arms too soon after the clash with Krillin.

"C-Contestant Krillin?" the announcer mumbled with a shaking voice, he must have forgotten that he was talking into a microphone since his fear translated through to the audience.

"There is… No use for the… Count…" Nam panted with his arms hanging without weight to them by his side.

"One!" the announcer started the count.

"Two!" Chayote glanced at Goku who looked trusting in his friend but even his carefree guise could not mask his worry.

"Three!" the audience looked absolutely shocked. If their looks were to be trusted, none of them believed the poor boy to even be alive at this point. Most of them looked confused as to why the announcer was even counting at this point.

"Four!" come to think of it, didn't Nam say that Krillin would be out for ten days straight? That was an impressive technique if Nam said the truth, then again, it was unlikely he had someone worth their salt to test that grand theory on.

"Five!" Oolong declared that Krillin was dead, much to Bulma's violent frustration.

"Six!" Bulma pulled on her hair, she may not have been worried about Krillin specifically though, as the girl kept on directing her stares at the other observers in the arena like Goku and Yamcha.

"Seven!" Yamcha looked shaken, he was cursing Krillin's fate but it appeared as if though he had accepted his friend's defeat.

"Eight!" Just out of curiosity, Chayote turned at Muten Roshi, the old man with shades. He was standing right beside Bulma and Oolong and his eyebrows were shaking with an erratic twitch while the old man was sweating profusely.

"Nine!" Would it not have been wiser to count days, given Nam's previous declaration, counting to ten seemed rather obsolete… Chayote's pondering was distracted by the weird sounds that Goku had been making by her side. It sounded like some popcorn was stuck in his throat while the boy was shaking in rage.

"Ten!" the announcer clocked in the end to the first match. "Contestant Krillin failed to stand up by the count of ten, the fight is over! Contestant Nam is the winner! Now, please, let's give this kid some medical attention!"

Goku raised his fists up by his side. "You bastard! You hurt Krillin!" he yelled at Nam who looked to be completely calm.

"As I've said, I merely knocked him out for ten days. I need to win the money to save my village but I am no monster." Nam replied, almost like shrugging off the ridiculous accusations from Goku's side.

Monks both human and anthropomorphic rushed onto the ring but then they all froze in terror. Krillin sat back up, rubbing his bald head and grunting in pain. Chayote smirked at the sight of Nam's jaw dropping to the floor. She never knew she liked it this much but she simply adored seeing guys that thought they were cool shit losing said shit in a less than cool manner.

"Ow ow ow ow! I'm up, I'm up, stop the count!" Krillin waved his hands up, finally mustering up the strength and balance needed to remove his hands from caressing the painful spots on his forehead.

"Ummm… I'm sorry, Contestant Krillin but… You've lost." The announcer hunched over in disbelief. His body failed the man just as Nam's composure failed the turban-donning warrior.

"Oh… Damn it! I guess I fell a bit short, huh?" Krillin laughed out. All hints of fear and anything that the boy may have held back disappeared. At that moment Chayote may have wanted to have a scouter on her the most. She could have sworn that while the two appeared somewhat close in terms of martial arts prowess, Muten Roshi's training assisting in compensating the difference in experience between Krillin and Nam, the exotic warrior surpassed Krillin in terms of power level up until the very end.

All that intrigued Chayote was if Krillin was capable of matching a stronger opponent there in the end. What a curious Earthling, it appeared as if though his power level grew just because he grew bolder. Could this mean that power levels weren't an absolute norm in battle? If mere distrust in one's own abilities could hamper one's power level to such an extent and then returning some of that confidence could have restored the lost power level, what other factors might have changed it?

If there were many ones like that? What if the power levels weren't as reliable as Chayote had thought them being? In that case, if emotional maturity and martial arts skill could have aided a weaker opponent, perhaps Muten Roshi's training was not useless at all?

"See? The old timer showed us something really cool! I thought just like you back in the day!" Goku chuckled before running up to Krillin and helping his friend stand up and dust his uniform.

"What was that?" Krillin wondered.

"Chayote doubted old timer's training," Goku exclaimed, still cackling like a toddler seeing a toy dangled in front of him.

"It's not about Muten Roshi's training. It's just… I didn't really feel like myself out there, you know. Then I heard you guys cheering and… For a moment it seemed like I could do anything. I guess it was just false courage." Krillin smiled while rubbing the back of his head with shyness.

"No. You were great. In the end though… You still held back a little. Part of you was still afraid of… Nam, the inevitable pain of the battle, a little effort, your own potential… Whichever case it was, that fear made you just a grain short." Chayote shook her head. Even she was surprised by how much she could read into the battle after training with Korin for just a handful of weeks and then training out in the world by herself.

"I… I see…" Krillin poked two of his index fingers against each other.

"Wow, you know martial arts really well too!" Goku gleamed with enthusiasm while looking at Chayote. He may have been looking up to fighting Chayote, then again, he was likely looking forward to fighting everybody around him.

"The cat that trained Muten Roshi showed me a thing or two." Chayote nodded. The announcer declaring the beginning of the second match distracted her from finishing her talk.

"What?! Old timer's been trained by a cat!?" Goku raised his hands up in amazement.

"Only Goku would believe something like that this easily…" Krillin squinted at his friend.

"Well… Talk to you later." Chayote jumped around, delivering punches and kicks that left Goku and Krillin in awe due to their speed. It should have. The two likely would not stand up to her in terms of raw power level even if they fought her together.

"In the left, the odorous Contestant Bacterian!" the announcer declared while gesturing at the hulking fatso that reminded more of a homeless man than a martial artist. "This man takes pride in never having taken a bath in his entire life!"

He reeked. Utterly. Chayote could not even stand in the same arena as him without pinching her nose. Her left arm was disabled just like that. If this bastard was even half of Chayote's power level, he'd have stood a chance at beating her due to this predicament alone. Earth was weird, the manner of ways in which the locals overcame the difference in power level was remarkable. Then again, it was unlikely that Chayote had sufficient time to build up that level of stench, even then, who knew if the likes of Saibamen could even sense odors?

Even the audience was pinching their nose up to the somewhere down in the middle rows. What a troublesome and utterly annoying ability. Chayote wanted to beat the crap out of this fool the most out of the tournament roster so she wanted for this match but that was before she stood in the same arena, taking in all the repugnant odors that Bacterian offered whether she breathed or not.

"And on the right, we've got Chayote. A self-proclaimed Saiyan, whatever that is, who made her way through the qualifiers with ease and violence not quite befitting a young lady!" the announcer turned to Chayote before his face turned green as if preparing for something he knew he'd regret.

"Match No. 2, begin!" the announcer declared, mustering up the impressive restraint to remove his hand from his nose and breathe in enough to explode with noise.

The monk rang the gong, giving the second match a more symbolic beginning than just an entertaining man yelling from the top of his lungs.

Right from the get-go, Bacterian grinned with his slobbering mouth and took a step forward. He was a bit on the respectful side, maybe he had seen Chayote handling her business during the preliminaries or maybe the hobo just liked to take his time. The Saiyan found the remarkable willpower within her to persevere and stand her ground.

Bacterian's left arm punch hit her straight in the jaw, sending the young Saiyan flying but with a thrusting motion of her palms, Chayote pushed her body off the edge of the arena and then soared into the skies. As high up as her strength allowed her. Way past the clouds and where the malodor of Bacterian could reach her.

"Oh! What a novel strategy!" Chayote could still make out the announcer's voice. "Contestant Chayote took it to the skies to avoid Bacterian's stench! It's too bad that she cannot attack from all the way up there!"

Showed how much that guy knew… It was not that Chayote could not blast Bacterian from where she was, it was that she was worried she'd kill him. That last hit sort of gave her a range of how powerful her attack needed to be. She'd rather not get disqualified nor would it be at all useful to not knock that fatso out with one attack. If he stood back up, Chayote would be forced to suffer that stench much longer.

"Alright… Focus…" the Saiyan mumbled to herself while extending her palm. Sure, she could use Ki attacks, just like her Lima Spear technique but that one was more muscle memory of tedious and grueling training rather than a display of mastery of Ki manipulation. Truthfully speaking, Chayote had not even opened up the water well of Ki mastery at her current level so even shooting a simple Ki blast was a task of concentration.

A puff of smoke came out. Chayote let out a grumble of frustration as she began plummeting down. Bacterian was waiting for her, lurking with his hands open. With that disgusting grin on his slobbering face, he tried wrapping his arms around the Saiyan and trap her in a bearhug but Chayote's tail made it around his sweaty and powdery with grains of dirt arm.

Even if she thought's she'd puke up, Chayote swung around Bacterian's arm and delivered a right blow to his jaw. That was enough to send the man flying over the audience and share some of the World Martial Arts Tournament action with those in the farther rows. It was a great success on multiple fronts as Chayote managed to knock the fatso out while simultaneously throwing him out of the arena.

The Saiyan unzipped the neck section of her tracksuit and then zipped it up over her nose. She was not about to suffer that repulsive redolence for the duration of the entire tournament. With a single bound, Chayote made it over the heads of most of the crowd, the rest of them parted halfway and made a circle for the Saiyan to rush to the unconscious hobo.

Even if it further tempted the female Saiyan to hurl, with a good-old spin and release trick she hurled Bacterian to the nearest fountain. She will sure as hell not brush him but he needed to take a bath for once. The water turned murky brown in the presence of the repugnant homeless man inside of it, effectively breaking Bacterian's impressive streak.

"Y-You… Y-You disgraced the water of this place. Is nothing sacred to you!?" Nam yelled out at Chayote as she passed into the waiting area.

"What's your problem?" Chayote turned to the martial artist she would face in the semi-finals.

"I can't believe you spoiled city brats, taking water for granted like that! There are places that are not this graced by Kami's mercy!" Nam was shaking almost. It was so unusual to see in a man so cool and mysterious.

"What do you mean? Water is free…" Son Goku pointed at the bathroom area in which were multiple taps that spread a seemingly endless supply of water.

"W-What!?" Nam lost his cool. "What did you say, child!?"

"He's right, it doesn't happen often but when he's right, Goku's right." Krillin nodded. The two kids took Nam by his elbow and together they headed for the bathroom. Chayote followed too just due to sheer boredom and kind of wanting to see inside the boy's bathroom for once. The fools didn't even notice her sneaking behind them.

Krillin yoinked the tap, unleashing the water contained within but without requiring too much time for it to spread, Bacterian's signature, knockout aroma spread throughout the bathroom forcing the three contestants to flee in terror.

"Whee, that stunk!" Goku collapsed on his buttocks, pinching his nose with both arms so hard it looked like he'd break it.

"I think Chayote may have messed up the water supply… The water's free but it's kind of useless now." Krillin pinched an empty space where his nose should have been. It made the young Saiyan wonder just what was Goku's friend smelling the world around him through, perhaps the skin around his nose area was a wet membrane of sorts through which this odd Earthling perceived smells?

So unlike other Earthlings? Maybe he too was an alien? His ability to take a beating far surpassed most other Earthlings Chayote had met. Then again, he was far from the strongest Earthling so maybe his abilities were a result of training, not genetics.

"I… I will make you pay!" Nam declared by throwing his fist out and freezing it right up in Chayote's face. "To have a source of water and then ruin it like this… It is unforgivable!"

The announcer was speaking up out in the arena, the brief break to fix the fountain must have been over and all those that ran away from the airborne Bacterian and his cloud of stench must have already returned. The four contestants headed back to observe the rest of the matches. Nam continued to stare at Chayote, giving her punishing stares.

"It can't be easy to annoy this guy. He maintained a cool head all throughout our match. I'm impressed…" Krillin muttered right up in Chayote's ear with a malicious squint to his eyes.


	14. Revelations

"Well, I guess I'm up!" Yamcha punched into his own palm with excitement. "See you in the semi-finals, Goku!"

"Heh, can't wait to see how much stronger you've gotten!" Goku raised a fist for a bump.

"Good luck, Yamcha." Chayote nodded.

"Th-Thanks!" Yamcha bowed his head.

"Was he blushing just now?" Krillin pointed at the overly excited, poor dolt who ran off to show off to the crowd and prepare for his match.

"Yeah, Yamcha's afraid of girls." Goku threw it out like it meant nothing at all.

"Well… He's a goner…" Chayote sighed.

"On our left, we have Yamcha!" the announcer turned to Yamcha, providing a relatively tame introduction. "Contestant Yamcha has been a lifelong fan of the World Martial Arts Tournament and has dreamed of one day winning it! Will we see a dream come true today!?"

"Go, Yamcha!" Bulma yelled from the first row. The floating cat and anthropomorphic pig by her side leaned out of the way of the inventor's passionate cheers.

"On our right, Ranfan!" the announcer turned with a gesture at a young woman already standing in a suggestive pose. "A lovely female Contestant who is not afraid to use her advantages in battle and dazzled her opposition before unleashing her ferocious skill!"

"Be gentle with me," Ranfan winked Yamcha's direction, making the poor dolt get flustered almost instantly.

Chayote chuckled observing Bulma's reaction. It appeared that this blue-haired brainiac was quite clingy to her mate as she began squeezing the head of her pig companion and punching it with a frightening level of ruthlessness. Just a simple blush on Yamcha's cheeks and a bit of a dazed look, slightly waving stance already made the inventor jealous. Their relationship must have been quite fickle if it required such close safeguarding.

"Begin!" the announcer ruled before the monk tolled the bell.

"Eek, you look like such a strong man!" Ranfan turned her knees to the side, bending out her body to display her bottom side in a rounder lighting.

"Well… I…" Yamcha's expression turned from flustered to goofy and drooling. The dolt could not see Ranfan's flying kick to his cheek if the temptress announced it with a drum squad and a building-sized poster.

"R-Ringout…" the announcer raised his right hand in the air. "Contestant Yamcha has been eliminated! Unbelievable!"

"Well… That did not last long…" Krillin squinted at poor Yamcha who was truly blessed with the luck of faltering consciousness. Had he fully realized the situation he was in and the cringe that it invited on the faces of the observers, he'd have died from embarrassment.

"Yamcha, you idiot! Just wait 'till I get my hands on you!" Bulma's voice from the first row overpowered the crowd.

"Huh… How did you know that ridiculous, wide-open stance would work?" Goku turned to Chayote. The Saiyan had to admit that her own cheeks simmered with a little, warm red too. Somehow she managed to feel embarrassed by someone else's failure.

"Would you please meet me in the yard?" a familiar voice rang in Chayote's head. The Saiyan turned to leave and excused herself, without bothering to answer Goku's childish question first.

"You're leaving? But I'm up next… You sure you want to miss my fight? I'm planning to have some fun!" Goku began stretching out and warming up.

"Go break a leg." Chayote dismissed him with a gesture of her hand but then halted. Did she really want to meet the old man now? She wanted to see Goku's fight to determine if he truly was a Saiyan, or not. Just seeing him fight once would have been enough for that. Then again, asking that old man that directly would have worked just as well. Surely he would have known if Goku was in any way unusual for what was common for Earthlings, both Krillin and Yamcha have already admitted that much.

* * *

"What? You're not Jackie Chun…" Chayote raised an eyebrow, recalling the old man being the one that she saw Goku and Krillin hang out with by the entrance. She saw him around the crowd, at times standing behind Bulma and her pets, at times looking all beaten up and pummeled, exiled to the farther reaches of the bystander area.

"True. But also false. The man you know as Jackie Chun was also the man you were looking for – Muten Roshi." The bald, old man replied, this time communicating using his voice and not the weird mental communication he was doing before.

"How did you know I was looking for you?" Chayote wondered.

"I know a lot about you. Not all, mind you, but a lot. I know you're looking for Son Goku as well. I have been unable to read your mind in its entirety though. I assume this must be because you are stronger than me." Jackie Chun, or rather Muten Roshi, pondered. When he was not staring at ladies, like he was earlier by the entrance, this man looked like a formidable wise man.

"Can you read it now?" Chayote closed her eyes, relaxing her mind. It would have helped to show Muten Roshi everything she knew so that she did not need to waste time here talking and having him doubt everything she said.

"No luck, sorry… It appears you are not yet in control of your own mind." Muten Roshi sighed after a moment of silence and seriousness.

"Oh well, it was worth a shot. I'm looking for you because Korin advised me to continue my training by training with you. He said you were his most talented pupil and that you've carried his teachings your own direction, one that was handy for any martial artist to learn." Chayote admitted.

"Well… To such a lovely young lady, how can I say no?!" Muten Roshi crept up to Chayote, his hands extended forward in a suggestive twitch, similar to a massage but he was not reaching for her shoulders or her neck. The sticking out tongue and the drooling were also not the most trustworthy details in the world.

Chayote stomped at the face of the old man out of instinct. Without thinking. Had she her better judgment, she'd have likely not cared too much about whatever this weirdo was up to, if only it was not due to Korin's training, now she may have killed the man who was supposed to pick up Chayote's training!

"You sure hit stronger than Bulma…" Muten Roshi whined with a red blunt force trauma gleaming all over his bald head. His glasses busted and blood changing snot on the old timer's nose. "I need to be more careful if I don't wanna get killed!"

"That's odd…" Chayote observed her trembling hand. "I was sure that a blow like that would kill just about anyone in this planet."

"Planet?" Muten Roshi exclaimed in surprise, standing on his feet all of a sudden, his glasses fixed as if this universe operated under some cartoon logic. Chayote could not understand if this was some martial arts technique or just an uncanny ability of the Earthlings. Perhaps it was this same unexplored law of the universe that made humanoid Earthlings out of Earth's fauna?

"That's right. I am a Saiyan from Planet Vegeta. So, I think, is the one you call Son Goku, although, I don't think that's his real name. It is just not a Saiyan name…" Chayote was glad to have finally met someone to take her story with some modicum of seriousness. "I'm not sure what he's doing here, if I had to guess, he was a low-class warrior sent here to exterminate your kind but… This far from the reaches of the Frieza Army… Even that's very unlikely. It would be decades until Frieza Army begins colonizing this section as I've not even heard of this planet before."

"And what are you doing here exactly?" Muten Roshi asked the right question. "One Saiyan on Earth, that's a miracle, let's assume, two? That's a tendency…"

"No. My presence here is the miracle. I died on Planet Vegeta but, as it happened, Heaven was destroyed so I had nowhere to go. This blue, pompous guy sent me here to boost some universe rating or something. He said this planet is too remote from the reaches of Frieza Army so I should be able to stay out of trouble." Chayote shrugged.

"You did not answer my question. What do you intend on doing here? You said Son Goku was supposed to exterminate all humans. Is that what you're planning as well?" Muten Roshi asked with a grim look on his face. Something troubled this man, he was remembering something perhaps as Chayote could almost feel the painful experiences that the man was reliving while staring at a blank, shadowy corner.

"I did. Initially. A lot of things happened since then, I've promised Upa that I'd only kill all the bad people before proceeding to the good ones. Then I've come to learn martial arts and I just want to learn some more of that. I think it's a remarkable cultural achievement, one worth preserving so I think I'll postpone destroying this planet until I've learned most of it." Chayote shrugged. "And now I met Son Goku… At this rate, I'll never fulfill my task. Although, if Bulma builds me a spacecraft I can use to return to Frieza Army space, maybe I won't need to."

"Hmmm…" Muten Roshi pondered while scratching his beard. He then smiled. Something about Chayote's story appeared to reassure him that this girl in front of him would not pose a threat to Earth after all. "I think I may have the answer for the question troubling you. Son Goku was brought up here on Earth by a man named Son Gohan – he was my pupil once. Son Gohan has mentioned to me about a peculiar, violent boy he had found in the mountains."

"Son Gohan? He must be the one who dismissed the boy's real name and gave him this ridiculous Earthling name…" Chayote said.

"What Son Gohan also had told me about once is that in his defiance, the boy had once fallen down a mountain and hit his head on a rock. He nearly died but after recovering from his injury he had become tamer, much more like a lovable grandson than Son Gohan had thought of Son Goku." Muten Roshi explained.

Chayote could not close her gaping mouth. A lot of things began making a lot more sense now. If Son Goku truly did hit his head on a rock as a toddler, he'd have received some brain injury and with the primitive Earthling medicine, he'd have been unable of healing himself right. He'd have grown up an imbecile. That was why he was the odd way he was now, that was why he could not recall a bit about his Saiyan upbringing but tales his fake grandfather had spun to him to explain his alien physiology.

"So why did you call me down here?" Chayote shrugged.

"Oh, I've noticed your inhuman power back in the qualifiers. Contestant Jackie Chun was me, you see… After seeing how brutally you've dispatched of Bacterian, I began wondering if you were a threat to Earth. I see now that I may have jumped the gun assuming that." Muten Roshi nodded his head at Chayote.

"That reminds me, what was the deal with the dress-up gig? Were you trying to scope me out, hoping I would not notice, or something?" Chayote scratched her head.

"Oh, no, no… Like a lot of human youths, you're far too selfish, assuming everything's about you." Muten Roshi extended his walking stick and lightly tapped it at the top of Chayote's head. The only reason why Chayote did not smack the old man about for this was because she was not sure if he was petting her or hitting her, given how the hit felt more like an irritation than genuine hurt. "I entered the tournament as Jackie Chun to teach my dear students a lesson. Can you tell what it is?"

"I'm missing a fight standing here, you know…" Chayote pressed her knuckles against her hips.

"My, my, how impatient. Training you will be such a pain… Forgetting about the fact that I'll be training someone who might kill me with a serious blow." Muten Roshi sighed. "I wanted to show my pupils that there would always be someone stronger. I did not want them to just win their first tournament and get arrogant all of a sudden. The journey of a martial artist is that of constant improvement. It is a journey, one without a definitive goal in mind and one that's always cut short in the end because the path leads to nothing but it is built out of the satisfaction of one's own life."

"You preach better than you teach. Why did you give up on teaching them that? Sounds like a useful lesson." The Saiyan bit the old man in the rear with a cheeky look.

"Hmph… So dense… There is no need for me to compete when you are there to do that work for me. All I am asking for is to do as you would have normally done – participate in the tournament and fight to your heart's extent. You will fulfill my mission that way too. There is no conceivable way for my students as they are now to defeat you, if I fought you, even I would have most likely failed. Given your power, there is not a being in this planet that can stop you, however, you are far too green and that is why someone like Bacterian, a raggedy martial artist with an uncanny ability made you uncomfortable." Roshi postured.

Chayote looked away. The images of Yamcha's humiliating defeat flashed through her mind. She sort of understood Roshi's point. Bacterian nearly skipped past the insurmountable difference in power by just being profoundly smelly. Ranfan defeated Yamcha, who seemed to be a far faster and stronger combatant just because she exploited a glaring weakness in the poor dolt's defenses. Krillin and Nam were almost equals in skill and power, the tip to Nam's favor was hardly definitive, however, Krillin lost because he did not believe in his own abilities enough, not because he was just weaker.

This single day on Earth taught Chayote more about fighting as an art form more than her entire lifetime training on Planet Vegeta did. And these people were pathetic weaklings to any even low-class Saiyan warrior. Son Goku just fell out of the sky and became the dominant figure around which every puny Earthling centered. And yet he was not the strongest on the planet, nowhere nearly so, even if he was, that may not have mattered as much as Chayote would have believed prior to landing on Earth.

"The audience is getting rowdy." Muten Roshi noted the obvious. "We best return to our places. I'll be expecting to see you on my island after this tournament. Master Korin may have taught you the necessary scraps but he left gaping holes in your skillset that require filling."

Chayote nodded and sighed. With her hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her tracksuit, the Saiyan returned to the waiting room. Goku was overjoyed but had nobody to share his glee with. He leaped at his fellow Saiyan with the first sight of her staring at him through the doorway. Like a stray wildcat, he wrapped his hands around Chayote's face and began rubbing his body against it. It seemed weird but, in a strange turn of events, Chayote did not mind ergo she did not resist.

"I won, I won, I won!" Goku yelled.

"Was the guy even strong? He looked tough but he also looked like a dinosaur, dinosaurs aren't fighters, they're breakfast, lunch, and dinner." Chayote asked.

"Hmmm... Lunch... Oh, right... He wasn't that tough but his gum technique was crazy strong! Caught me unprepared, nearly got me disqualified too when I used Kinto!" Goku kept on recounting after a brief distraction.

"Wait… Kinto?" Chayote raised her eyebrow. "So you've met Korin?"

"Who? I meant Kinto… You know… Kinto!" Goku called out and in an all too familiar shriek, a yellow cloud parked itself neatly right beside the two Saiyans.

"Kinto!" Chayote called out, her Dark Kinto landed on the opposite side of the golden one.

"Hmmm?" Goku leaned in to examine the cloud. "Wow, this thing's so weird… Where'd you get it? Why is it black?"

"As I've said before, Korin is the only one to be able to carve the great Kinto cloud. When he called down one during my training, I was unable to ride it so he said we had to wait for the cloud to get stormy and black. Then we took this Dark Kinto, I was able to ride this one." Chayote explained.

"Huh? Old timer gave me mine as a gift for helping Blockhead return to Muten Roshi." Goku smiled.

Everything seemed to make this goofball laugh, then again, he did hit his head pretty hard as a kid. Knowing that part of his background made Chayote a bit more tolerant towards the kid.

"Congratulations, Goku." Yamcha smiled, extending his hand for a shake. His head had a bandage wrapped around it and had a suspicious, red-glowing bump at the side of his head and a couple of his teeth were missing. Chayote wondered if those injuries were because of Ranfan's kick but it did not look that bad from where she was standing. Then again, Yamcha, while cute, was quite puny.

"I can't believe you're the only one of us to have won a fight…" Krillin complained before getting more cheerful and congratulating his friend again.

"What are you talking about? Chayote won her fight quite easily too…" Goku lowered his eyebrows to sharpen the angles of his eyes a bit on the front.

"Oh… Sorry, sorry, forgot to count Chayote in…" Krillin laughed out.

"Hmph…" Chayote closed her eyes and raised her chin. "Just for the record, Son Goku, I am not one of your pawns here to spout exposition about your opponents like Yamcha or take a beating for you, like Krillin. I fully intend to lead your little parade and the reason why I am not challenging you right now is because it is apparent that we will meet in the finals. That is when I will challenge you for leadership."

Yamcha and Krillin laughed out. They seemed to take everything Chayote said as a joke. Goku smiled but the only thought that amused the young boy was the fact he may have ended up facing Chayote at some point down the line. Goku extended his fist, asking Chayote for a bump which he received.

First, find out what that Nam-guy's problem was and calm him down, then – Son Goku.


	15. Images of Afterwards

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the semi-finals of the World Martial Arts Tournament are about to begin!" the announcer did his job hyping the people in the audience up. The success of his endeavor seemed almost effortless and rightfully so – the people were brimming with excitement and wanted to be inspired for even hotter passion.

"You feeling okay?" Krillin wondered. Hearing the faltering tone of his voice Chayote put together what the pint-sized brawler meant. He wondered if the terror that befell him in the first round plagued the Saiyan as well.

"Of course I'm fine." Chayote looked back at Goku's friend. "A Saiyan does not fear taking on even a much stronger opponent, why would one fear an enemy far weaker than them?"

"Wow, Chayote's confident!" Goku chuckled out loud with a simian expression. "I'm getting the butterflies in my stomach and I'm not even the one fighting!"

"Making her way to the arena, on the right side, is Contestant Chayote. This lovely maiden has busted through the quarterfinals by defeating the revered Bacterian with a single attack!" the announcer pointed to his right. Chayote stood by Goku and Krillin, waiting for her cue to come but Yamcha's encouraging touch pushed her forward. The Saiyan turned back with an irritated angle to her eyebrows but then realized that the cute dolt was encouraging her to make a grand entrance.

With a little bit of dashing flare, Chayote moved in just in time even after missing the sign to make her departure from the waiting area. A cascade of boos resonated through the arena, making the Saiyan scratch the back of her head and flap her tail about with a hint of scorn.

"Go home!" someone in the audience yelled out.

"You ruined the water supply in the heat of May, you harpy!" another man shouted at Chayote.

The baffled Saiyan just made a few hops to warm her feet up and threw a pair of sluggish blows to get into the spirit. She made sure to power down as much as she could, to at least where the likes of the contestants of this Earthling tournament could truly challenge her. There would have been no fun in just winning this without learning anything about martial arts, as originally intended.

"On the left, we have the cool and mysterious Contestant Nam!" the announcer turned to the left. "This man comes from the land far to the north-west. Contestant Nam, if you are to win this tournament, and you seem to be the crowd favorite, what will you do with the prize money?"

"I shall buy water for my village." Nam declared without much fanfare. The man did not even bother opening his eyes or leaving his prayer stance for the reply.

"B-But… Contestant Nam… Surely you understand that water is free…" the announcer fixed his shades that were attempting to make a deceitful escape from his nose.

"It may be. This scorn, however, has ruined the water supply of the modern world as well. For this she must pay, I will not allow the modern people to suffer the way that my villagers are suffering!" Nam declared, finally breaking his composure and making a bunch of menacing gestures at the nearby Saiyan in front of him.

"Yeah, that's right, kick her ass! Buy everyone the water we need!" someone in the audience yelled out.

"B-But…" the announcer fixed his shades again. "You are aware that this measly fountain was not the water supply of the entire world? In fact, the water of that fountain was not meant for drinking at all… We have wells reaching to the much deeper layer of underground water."

"I… I was not aware of that fact." Nam's eyes shot wide open. "The modern world is truly blessed."

"What are you talking about? Where did all that fiery spirit go?" Chayote spun her head about and stretched out her neck. She needed to make sure to not power up the slightest or else she threatened to end this fight prematurely. Slight bursts of power could have come and gone out of the blue, just a mere moment of fear could have triggered it. "Are we going to fight, or not?"

"Oh! Contestant Chayote is firing up!" the announcer raised both of his hands up before lowering his right one and yelling out into his voice-enhancing gadget. "Begin!"

The gong rung, despite the first fight of the semi-finals being officially underway, neither one of the two martial artists entered their fighting stances. Both of them stood with their backs perfectly straight and both their hands held relaxed by their side.

"What's going on? Aren't they going to fight?" Krillin wondered, observing the fight from aside.

"Amazing!" Goku declared. "I've never seen a fighting stance like that!"

"Yeah, it's like Chayote's got no openings whatsoever!" Yamcha nodded.

"They're both just standing still…" Krillin squinted.

"It must have been taught by Master Korin. Now I'm really fired up to meet him!" Goku jumped up and down from his vantage point atop of the wall protecting the observer area from the hectic combat action in the arena.

"Do not worry, I will honor your request for a fight. I must say, however, fighting without a goal that restricts me and demands that I win… It feels invigorating. This fighting mania of yours must be rubbing off on me, I am not known as a violent person." Nam looked at his own hands, trembling with excitement. Without being prompted any further, the water-seeking man entered his wide-guard fighting stance by raising his right hand up in front while the left hung back, ready to block, his feet stretched out wide and his knees bend down to keep the center of balance lower.

"Yeah, I agree that a good brawl is its own reward. Now, are you going to punch me, or not?" Chayote taunted her opponent.

Nam launched himself as if he had been affected by that taunt, even if, judging by his composure and restrained manner of attack, he barely registered it at all. Chops and knee strikes came from every direction, instead of taking them head-on, Chayote blocked the chops with her own matching attacks and responded to the knee strikes with her own knees raised for blocking.

"She's… Just repeating what Nam is doing." Yamcha observed.

"She's studying him as she's fighting. It helped that she's seen me fight so Chayote already knows a couple of Nam's moves." Krillin agreed to the assessment.

After Nam had exhausted his close-combat arsenal, the desert warrior slid back in a manner that looked difficult to pull off with bare feet. Despite that choice of combat attire, Nam floated across the arena like a water strider on a lake surface. Nam was panting, having shown his true strength right out from the get-go and tried to apply a shocking blitz strategy on Chayote. With the Saiyan having weathered the storm with a near effortless response, Nam's plan was now rendered void.

"You seem to have absorbed my style well. Don't be shy to tell me if there is anything more I can teach you." Nam cheeked at the Saiyan with a sideways smirk.

"The high-speed movement burst you used to incapacitate Krillin was interesting. Show it to me." Chayote replied oblivious to the witty nature of Nam's previous taunt.

Nam emitted a powerful battle shout before dashing onward again. His headstrong approach seemed difficult to understand, Chayote knew that this could not have been all to the desert warrior's strength and he must have already noticed the ease with which Chayote had blocked his previous attacks. If Nam did not realize he would be punished for approaching combat the same way twice, he deserved every bit of what was coming.

With a careless smack of her back-hand, the teen Saiyan attempted to knock her opponent out while simultaneously throwing him off bounds. It would have been another complete victory on her part. Nam proved himself to be smarter than that, however, honoring Chayote's request, Nam had faded out in a burst of speed and moved behind the Saiyan. Instead of delivering his crushing chop, however, the desert warrior surprised even the alien visitor herself.

Chayote's mouth lowered down, it felt like the muscles could no longer support her own jaw. Even her eyelids began weighing down while her entire body started shutting down. The strength in her overworked knees came next. In their crippled state, they could no longer keep the Saiyan on her feet and she fell flat on her face, letting out a dull thud as the young woman cracked the tiles of the arena with her face.

Nam held Chayote's tail firmly in his hands.

"You should not have told us about your weakness." Nam smiled. "Our folklore is full of almighty mythical monsters with weaknesses that teach the hero a lesson while they dispatch the monster. I am not sure what lessons are there to be learned with dispatching you, Saiyan, but you are not the end of my journey either. Your strength is remarkable, by far the scariest I have ever seen, I hope you get to use it to help people in the future."

With a crawling pace, Nam dragged Chayote across the arena and prepared to sling her. Her mouth felt far too weak to talk and curse the deceitful move of her opponent. Chayote just kept bumping her head against each successive tile as she was powerless to resist with her tail in Nam's control.

"Oh! Contestant Nam is heading for a victory via ring-out!" the announcer's voice boomed across the tournament grounds. With her body completely sapped of strength, this augmented yelling was the only way for her to understand what was happening and if she had lost yet. "Contestant Chayote had revealed her weakness to the contenders after the preliminaries! She had hoped that grabbing one's tail would be added to the list of offenses but it, in fact, turned against her!"

Everything seemed to have stopped. Chayote had almost gotten used to her face and entire upper body being dragged across the arena and the feeling of powerlessness and yet it appeared as if time itself had frozen. Her strength did not return as Nam's iron clutch was still around her tail, sending numbing impulses resonating throughout her entire nervous system but he was not doing anything new.

"Contestant Nam is just standing by the very edge of the arena! What could he be thinking about!? All he needs is to fling Contestant Chayote off the arena!" the announcer yelled out into his microphone, judging from the tone of his voice he was truly enjoying this enigmatic conundrum.

"Stop it!" Goku's voice reached Chayote's ears too. "You're fighting dirty! If you beat Chayote this way, I'll come at you with everything I have and beat you senseless!"

"He's… Smiling… Why's he smiling?" Krillin's confused and still afraid, despite his matches in the tournament having long since finished, voice joined the fray.

"If I was in this to win. If I still needed the money for the water for my village, I may have considered winning this way." Nam spoke seemingly to himself but given how in her paralyzed and powerless state Chayote heard it all, she understood the words as being directed at her as well. "Now, however, when all that I desire is to fight it out for fun, winning this way would be pointless…"

The air whooshed around Chayote's head, a chilly breeze was a poor companion for utter weightlessness. Within mere moments of the odd and liberating feeling of free-fall, Chayote felt her back hit the ground. Underneath her cupped fingers was not the chilly and frail grass or dirt, it was the stony tiles of the arena – Nam flung her back into the middle of the ring on her back!

"Oh! What a shocking turn of events!" the announcer shouted out with all of the capacity of his lungs he had to spare, the man yelled with his entire body hunched over to support the spread of his voice. "Contestant Nam has just declared he does not wish to win by ring-out!"

"Cross-Arm Dive!" Nam declared while he was still praying on the ground. Within seconds he took flight and then flipped over and crossed his arms over his head to dive down and drive his crossed arms into Chayote's neck, using the famed technique that was meant to send her to sleep for ten whole days.

Chayote was almost curious enough about how strong this move was to take its full brunt but she was even more curious about another move she had learned. Nam's crossed arms closed in on Chayote's throat inch by inch, counting the passing milliseconds would have been pointless as the follow up occurred near instantaneously.

Chayote's body blurred and disappeared from where it was laying sprawled out and in prime condition for a finishing touch like the Cross-Arm Dive. Before Nam could complete his crushing descent, Chayote's image moved in to right behind the desert warrior and delivered a devastating kick to the man's back. Nam's mouth shot open, spouting out slobber and extending farther than the jaw of a conscious man should have let it open up.

Like a speeding missile, Nam blasted across the arena and smashed into the wall outside of it, separating the bystanders' area from where the matches were taking place. The wall exploded with a downfall of bricks from the might of the blow in which Nam crashed into it. Chayote may have overdone it a bit, then again, controlling her strength was a bit difficult when she was both fighting someone this much below her power level and was trying out a new technique.

"That was… Incredible! She left an image of herself behind her!" Goku pointed at Chayote who stared at Nam with a disgruntled look. The Saiyan looked around the audience that was beginning to heat up and make obscene hand gestures her way.

Whether it was because she busted most of the bodies in the Bacterian's body, crippling him for a long time while also spoiling the nice-looking local fountain at the same time, or because she was this rough with a liked contestant of the tournament who in terms showed her mercy just to have a more fulfilling match, maybe because she was an alien, or maybe all of those things combined, Chayote was getting some mad heat.

"S-Someone take Contestant Nam to the infirmary!" the announcer tried getting Nam some help but Chayote leaped off of the arena and approached the downed contestant. From a sizeable pocket of her green tracksuit, she pulled out a sash of small beans, one of which she shoved into Nam's mouth and forced him to chew, making the first chewing motions with Nam's way too relaxed jaw herself.

"I-Incredible!" the announcer raised his hand with the index finger pointing to the sky as if whatever was so mind-blowing was transpiring somewhere in the skies instead of right in front of him. "Contestant Chayote appeared to heal Contestant Nam completely using some mystical peas from her sash!"

"I'm… Healed…" Nam looked at his fully recovered body and even massaged his jaw that felt just fine now. "I… Don't even feel hungry anymore."

"Take this sash. These are Senzu, whenever you're hungry or hurt, just eat one and you'll get fine and have your stomach turn full for ten whole days." Chayote shrugged.

"I… I cannot accept this…" Nam handed the sash back to Chayote.

"Whatever, take it, there're whole barrels full of this stuff back at Korin's Tower. I only took a handful because I thought I'd never need them with how weak the locals were…" Chayote turned down the offer and stuffed her hands into her now emptied pockets instead.

The young woman named Bulma, the one that was a friend of Goku's and, apparently, fond of Yamcha, approached Nam through the devastated bystander wall and handed him a small briefcase.

"I suggest you take Chayote's offer. If your village is thirsty, it's likely to be hungry too. Take this too. Inside this briefcase are capsules. You can use them to store all the water you will need." Bulma smiled at the blushing desert warrior.

"Oh! What a completely unexpected ending! What a heart warmer!" the announcer kept on yelling into his microphone as if the battle had not yet ended. "It seems that Contestant Nam will be returning to his home village with food and water after all! He may have lost the tournament but he got everything he came here to win it for!"

Chayote, with hands still in her pocket, turned around and walked off without letting Nam do it first and barely acknowledging Nam's farewells by raising one of her hands out of her pocket and up in the air with a clenched fist, without even looking back at the departing martial artist. He may have been a weakling but fighting him taught Chayote a thousand lessons.

The crowd… The crowd was no longer booing or throwing things. They were dead-silent before beginning to yell encouraging cheers and… Yes. There were more than a few claps.

Goku and Krillin were observing the events with their mouths fully open and wearing the biggest and goofiest smiles on their faces the whole time. Yamcha looked much more composed but even he had the longest grin on his face and warm eyes that squished any declarations that Goku's friend may have been faking his emotions.

"Wow, I can't believe you pulled off an Afterimage Technique!" Muten Roshi's voice resonated through Chayote's head.

"If that what it's called…" Chayote thought to herself, knowing that the peeping old man would hear it.

"Nam's usage of the technique was flawed because he still lacked the speed to leave an actual afterimage. You did not perform a perfect afterimage either but your use was already surpassing that of Nam's by a thousand miles. His was just a mere burst of speed. Yours was a proper attempt." Muten Roshi pondered.

"Korin may have shown me the technique a pair of times… It wasn't like I just pulled it off out of the blue." Chayote shrugged while returning to the cheerful squad of Goku and his friends. She felt the volume of Muten Roshi's thoughts dampen as she added some distance between them.

"Perhaps. But the most important lesson you have learned at the end. The lesson that the people you share this world with accept those that walk the path of the light instead of those that sulk in the darkness." Muten Roshi added before the link faded away.

"The next match of the semi-finals is Contestant Goku against Contestant Ranfan! However, we will make a brief intermission for the protective wall to be repaired first! Don't tread too far, we'll be back in a moment!" the announcer briefed the audience and the contestants in on what was to come.

Little by little, the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament was beginning to wrap itself up.


	16. A Requirement for an Adult to be Present

"Say," Goku spoke up while stretching and warming up for his upcoming match. "How come you got weaker after Nam grabbed your tail?"

Goku's own tail appeared to be waggling about by his side, Chayote did not see it grow back but it must have happened at some point during his match because she had barely interacted with the Saiyan boy after that match. What a useless thing fate was, just when Muten Roshi clarified things for her, Son Goku's tail chose to grow back…

It would have spared her a whole lot of confusion had it done so earlier!

"I already told you," Chayote grumbled, feeling a bit peeved that Goku would decide he wanted to hear the truth now of all times. Then again, given how there were no more doubts about his Saiyan heritage, Chayote may as well have spilled the beans. "I'm a Saiyan, just like you."

"Oh yeah, I think I do recall you saying that…" Goku wondered, breaking his concentration just to ponder like a toddler trying to work out an elementary math problem.

"You're going to need to be a bit more precise about terms like that with Goku." Krillin nudged his friend while cheeking and squinting at him at the same time. "He thinks everything new he hears about is a kind of food…"

"Chayote said these Saiyans are like her and me, I don't think I'm food." Goku pouted his cheeks, getting a bit offended by Krillin's friendly jab.

"The Saiyans are a warrior race that lives on Planet Vegeta. Their worth and social status is determined at birth. Their destiny is guided by King Vegeta and his advisors. Those with low power level are sent out to distant planets, to conquer them and grow stronger at the same time, so that they can one day rejoin their Saiyan brethren and strengthen the might of the Saiyan army. Our standing and purpose have changed a bit over the years but… Our way of life remains mostly the same." Chayote explained. Talking about Planet Vegeta was beginning to feel like a distant fever dream at this point. It kept inviting uncomfortable memories, dying would do that to someone…

"So… You mean Saiyans aren't some distant tribe but a whole different alien race!?" Yamcha freaked out. "That means… Goku's an alien!?"

"He turns into a Great…" Chayote was about to question Yamcha's foolish grip to the dream that Goku was human while he defied every rule of normal human behavior before Yamcha jumped in to press his hand against Chayote's mouth.

The Saiyan blushed a little, Yamcha was sluggish in his charge and she could have dodged him a thousand times over but she was so intrigued by his movement and the intent that fueled them that she let him cover her mouth. The poor dolt took some extra time to realize he was touching the mouth of a young woman which made him shriek out and jump back, his face redder than his headband.

Goku erupted in wild laughter, holding his belly with both his hands in excitement to keep himself from tearing. "Yamcha touched a girl," he cheered before recalling what Chayote had said to make Yamcha this nervous. That recollection appeared to bust his childish glee from the bottom up.

"Wait… You mean… I'm an alien!?" Goku freaked out, his eyes bulged out wide and his mouth dropped down in an uneven balance between the two sides of his jaw. "Oh well…" the kid then shrugged and resumed his warm-up as if nothing that had just shaken his worldview had transpired.

"Leave it to Goku to completely brush it off…" Krillin squinted at his friend, looking not too surprised of what he had just heard. This did not seem all that out of the ordinary, it may have been that after training together Krillin had noticed leagues of things that seemed like out of this world to him about Goku and he had not yet had an overly deep bond with the child Saiyan for it to be shaken too much after hearing this news.

"So… You're here to conquer Earth then? Both of you?" Yamcha leaned in to Chayote, looking grim but choosing to keep his words away from Goku with a whisper. He must have taken Chayote's cold awareness of her own upbringing as a more favorable element to reason with rather than Goku's gentle buffoonery.

"I don't know what Goku's doing here." Chayote grumbled. "This name… Goku… It bothers me. It's not a Saiyan name and a Saiyan is disgraced by being called something dumb like that."

"So then you're here to conquer Earth?" Krillin pointed at Chayote with fearful eyes and a complete lack of restraint from having Goku hear everything being discussed.

"No. Well… I was not sent here to conquer Earth. I am busy conquering it though." Chayote shrugged. "Right now I'm in the process of wiping its inhabitants clean, all the evil people first."

"So you're a good person then?" Goku turned to Chayote with a questioning glare.

"Why are you asking? You can usually tell a lot about people by smelling them…" Yamcha wondered, recalling this uncanny ability of Goku's.

"Yeah but… Chayote smells weird. She doesn't feel bad but… Not really good either. Not like anybody though it's just… I don't really know which she smells like more." Goku shrugged before resuming his warm-ups.

Krillin and Yamcha both looked at each other. Chayote could tell that both of them felt uncomfortable standing around a youth who had just declared she was going to kill everyone and take over their home planet. Very few Earthlings in Chayote's experience even had their awareness expand farther than their home planet which made them put too much value on this cozy space rock.

The gong went off, calling all of the audience members that have left for the restroom or for snacks to return, also, calling all of the remaining contestants as well as the eliminated contestants that have decided to become spectators back to their places.

"Thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer yelled out. "It is now time for the semi-finals of the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament to resume!"

Goku and Ranfan walked out of the waiting room and into the arena, right in front of one another. Goku stood in an open and honest stance of his arms hanging by his side, relaxed and his legs extended to the sides. He was trying to mirror Chayote's stance and, the female Saiyan had to admit, he was doing a fine job at it.

"Contestants Son Goku and Ranfan are already in the ring!" the announcer declared while raising both of his arms up.

"Don't get too rough with me, cutie!" Ranfan leaned forward, it seemed like an odd choice of stance to Chayote as it exposed both her face and her chest – two of the areas one must have protected at all costs during battle.

"Why, are you some kind of weakling?" Goku wondered, looking genuinely curious.

"Don't fall for it, Goku! She's trying to lure you into dropping your guard!" Yamcha warned his friend.

"Like she did with you?" Krillin leaned to Yamcha's side and mumbled to him.

"Well… Yes…" Yamcha looked flustered as he wrapped his arms over his chest and looked away for a second.

The gong declared the beginning of the match and without waiting for an extra request to kick things off, Ranfan fired off as if unchaining herself. It was the female competitor of the World Martial Arts Tournament to have gone all out, after all.

Goku hopped aside without minding Ranfan's flying kick too much. Even more, the Saiyan swept at his opponent's feet with his other foot, bending his body like a monkey to pull it off. Fumbling without any sense of balance, Ranfan fell on her behind and screamed out in shock and discomfort. Goku charged at the fallen competitor with full intent on continuing his relentless attack and exploiting the opening he had created but Ranfan just shrieked out, covering her face with both arms in a highly questionable manner.

"Huh? What are you doing?" Goku wondered, pointing his finger at his opponent who then promptly crossed her knees with a blush and bit her nail, assuming a seductive pose.

Ranfan appeared right behind Goku, shocking everybody in the audience of the full extent of her speed. With a thunderous thud, the female competitor delivered a crushing double ax handle strike to the back of Goku's head, forcing the Saiyan eyes to blank out while he roared a painful grunt and collapsed on his face.

"Begin the count!" Ranfan prompted the announcer, wanting the man to hurry up and rush her victory count.

"Ummm… Very well… One!" the announcer started counting but then stopped while Goku sat up, rubbing the back of his head with a pain-ridden expression and a bunch of whines of a pathetic excuse for a warrior who had dropped his guard just because he did not understand the tactics of his opponent.

"She's formidable." Chayote stated. "She would have been on par with Yamcha even if she did not exploit his weakness."

"Yeah, she might be a dirty tease but her power is still nothing to sneeze at." Krillin nodded.

"Damn it!" Ranfan lost her cool, dashing at Goku at full speed with a long-reaching kick that she aimed straight for Goku's jaw.

The dazed Saiyan boy rolled back like a football after Ranfan decked him straight where she had intended. Goku sprawled out by the edge of the arena, his head bobbing down from the ring. The mistake of being caught by Ranfan's oddball strategy may have just cost Goku the match. It was not that much of an inconvenience, Chayote had few reservations about fighting Ranfan in the finals, even if she would have preferred Goku. There would still be ample time for training with the only Saiyan in this remote corner of the galaxy.

Ranfan leaped into the air, hoping to crush Goku with a landing knee dive but Goku raised his head at the very last moment, a trick that appeared to nearly drive Ranfan to a heart attack that would have resulted in the Saiyan getting disqualified. Winning the tournament this way would have come as a shock to be certain.

While Ranfan crawled back in fear of Goku's retaliation, Goku jumped back to his feet and gave the fleeing opponent a peace sign with a wide, monkey-like grin on his face.

"This is over." Chayote breathed out the gulp of bitter breath that was rotting inside her for a short while. A breath of doubt and uncertainty about the winner of this match. "It is true that Ranfan's antics can help her in taking on stronger opponents than her in terms of power level but she cannot hope to compensate for this kind of difference with mere winks."

"Alright, you better get ready!" Goku entered his fighting stance. "I'm gonna attack you for real now!"

Ranfan took a wary step back and then collapsed to her knees, burying her face in her hands while she whined out loud. Crying and begging for one's life seemed like such a pathetic ploy to Chayote, now she was beginning to sort of want to face this woman who was making a mockery of martial arts in the finals. Whoever won this, Chayote felt content with her opponent for the finals.

"For real!? Oh no, you're such a meanie!" Ranfan cried out.

"Mean?" Goku lost his composure again and broke his stance, "How am I mean? I haven't even attacked you yet?"

Ranfan disappeared again, flying at Goku with a wicked blow to his jaw, likely she threw this punch as a mean of targeting the opponent's abdomen but with her opponent being this short she had to adapt. Goku's image faded away, leaving everybody in the audience and the spectators gawking at the flawless display of the Afterimage technique but Ranfan the most baffled out of everybody else.

With a triumphant battle cry, Goku kicked Ranfan in her back. The female competitor fumbled forward, stunned by the blow and then fell over. She appeared lifeless for the longest time.

"His follow-up was flawed." Chayote stated, "He performed the setup even better than I did after just seeing it done once, yet he lost so much of his potential strength in the follow-up attack."

"That's what you get for studying on the battlefield…" Yamcha stated with a grim expression.

"Ranfan may have been just crying wolf but… That kick really was mean…" Krillin leaned back, showing hesitation and distaste of what he was seeing in the arena.

"It is underestimating like this that leads to losing to this woman. It's what she's counting on." Yamcha scolded his recently met friend for not having learned a thing from Yamcha's mistake as well as what he had been observing to this point on.

"Hmmm? Aren't you going to start counting?" Goku turned to the announcer.

"O-Oh! That's right!" the announcer got to his senses and began counting. "One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight…"

Ranfan whined out in pain, her arms trembled but she stood back up. It was to be expected after Goku wasted this much of his strength on the follow-up strike. Pulling off the Afterimage Technique was one thing, following it up with an attack may have been another technique of its own entirely.

"Golly, it seems like there's no other choice but to use my Ultimate Move!" Ranfan smirked. Her face dirtied by her less than gracious landing.

"Really, really!? What kind of a move is it!?" Goku looked like he could hardly wait. He may not have been this excited this entire match.

Ranfan giggled as she removed her top and slid off her trousers with a careless flick of her wrist. Ranfan dangled her shirt in the wind, standing in just her underwear, before dropping it to the ground nearby her trousers. Ranfan placed her hands onto her hips, bouncing her bottom around to accentuate her partial nudity. With a self-confident stroll, the female contestant approached Goku.

"Whatsa matter? Doncha wanna hit me?" she barked with oozing seductive undertones.

"Hmmm? I don't get it…" Goku mumbled. "Missy, where's your secret technique?"

"What are you, some kind of an imbecile!?" Ranfan threw a fit before bouncing her assets about to strengthen the effect of her ultimate move.

"Ummm… Contestant Ranfan… Contestant Goku is just a child. Contestant Goku, how old are you?" the announcer wondered, crawling back on stage and extending his microphone for Goku.

"Huh? Why are you giving me this? I thought I was forbidden to use any weapons…" Goku said before the boy noticed that his voice was enhanced by the gadget that the announcer held in his hand and extended toward him.

"Ummm… Let's see… Nine… Ten… Eleven…" Goku kept counting. "I'm twelve!" he concluded.

"Twelve!" Krillin flipped out from where he was spectating the match from. "But you said you were fourteen when we were training with Muten Roshi!"

"So I did…" Goku laughed out and leaned back on his arms crossed behind his back. "I didn't know how to count right then."

Everyone was blown off their feet by how boldly Goku stated that fact. Ranfan picked up her shirt and used it to cover up her ultimate assets with an embarrassed look on her face. She realized just how screwed it was now that her ultimate technique, the one ace she held hidden under her sleeve this whole time proved to be completely inefficient against Goku.

"Humph. Even if Goku was older, I bet he would remain oblivious to Ranfan's techniques given how numb-skulled he is…" Krillin squinted at Yamcha with a jesting tone.

"True. Ranfan breezed through this Tournament by having the upper hand on everyone. It is just right that she hits a wall against an opponent she absolutely cannot defeat. One that is immune to her techniques and one that she is in a vast disadvantage against." Yamcha nodded.

"Hmph… Whatever. I give!" Ranfan slipped into her shirt and picked her trousers back up off the ground while making a less than dignified escape from the arena. As expected, even if a formidable martial artist in her own right, once her mightiest trump card proved itself ineffective, Ranfan conceded.

Chayote had been at complete awe spectating the different matches of the tournament, seeing how different techniques and fighting styles may have helped compensate for differences in battle power but this match also taught to be wary of sheer gimmicks as they would never carry her the entire way to the end of the road. There were always opponents out there that were so far ahead that mere gimmicks may not have helped compensate the gap in power.

"And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen! We've got ourselves a final bout! Contestant Son Goku against Contestant Chayote for the final match!" the announcer declared. Goku turned to Chayote and straightened his body. The two shared stares with one another.

This match to come was important. It must have served as a connector between the two, Son Goku was of paramount importance to Chayote's purpose on Earth. He was someone she may have used to train more effectively, he could have been her ally if she ever managed to take off to space. They had already established contact and, without a doubt, the kid already considered her a friend, as she was sort of growing tolerant of his bumbling existence, but Saiyans only truly connected through sharing their fists with one another and them clashing was inevitable since the moment they first exchanged stares with one another.

From the way Goku had been moving up until now, Chayote surmised she was stronger than Goku by a decent margin but if she's seen anything in this tournament, it was that mere power level was by no means a definitive factor. Goku's movements were crafty and weird, it appeared as if his fighting style had been invented by watching animals he lived around. That very style may have held some surprises of its own…

Only the final match will tell for sure.


	17. Skill VS Strength! The Finals Begin!

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, all that remains is the fight to end all fights! The bout to determine the one that is truly the Strongest Under the Heavens!" the announcer raised his hands up only to follow the rising wave of hype with a sprinkle of disappointment. "However, to keep things fair, we will be having a brief 10-minute intermission for our less fortunate finalist to get a breather! If you ever found any of the limited-time World Martial Arts Tournament accessories suit your fancy, now's the time to nab them!"

"Man, Goku's in a real pickle." Krillin laughed out, rubbing the back of his bald head. "He'll have to fight Chayote in the finals right after fighting Ranfan."

"It is unfortunate." Yamcha nodded with an awkward smirk. One that he likely faked.

"What's wrong, you don't believe that Son Goku can win? Saiyan blood runs through him, out of all the people here he's the only one to have ever stood a chance." Chayote teased the martial artist.

"No, it's just… How did Goku get this good? We've all been training for the same amount of time and I trained my hardest. In the end, it doesn't seem like I will ever have a chance against him." Yamcha's expression lightened up. It looked like a boulder had just plummeted off his chest just through the sheer act of voicing his thoughts.

"Of course not, Saiyans are a warrior race." Chayote looked back at Goku. With drools tracing his steps the boy ran off to stuff his stomach to the fullest.

"How can you even eat right now? Right before the most important fight in your life?" Krillin sighed.

Goku froze. The boy turned back and looked at Chayote with a curious glare. "Aren't you going to eat?" he wondered.

"No. You must absolutely replenish your strength but if I eat now and to the same – there won't even be a fight." Chayote taunted her little Saiyan rival.

"That's not fair. I want to fight you at your strongest!" Goku protested. What a brat… He made no compromises, left no space for them even. He demanded what he wanted and expected things to go his way, just like a true Saiyan would have. How could Chayote have ever doubted this buffoon's heritage? Then again, it took exposure to another Saiyan to bring out his most interesting traits.

"Well, if you want it…" Chayote taunted her opponent in the finals, the tails of both Saiyans spun around in the air, coming dangerously close to lashing at each other in few spots but eventually swinging away from one another.

"The moment you have all been waiting for has arrived! The final match of the World Martial Arts Tournament! This here's a showdown between two Saiyans! Whatever that means! This curious tribe of people with tail have invaded our tournament and are now ready to clash! Just who will win this showdown!?" the announcer did his thing and hyped the crowd up. He filled his speech with meaningless banter just to invite those that have wandered off too far in the Papaya Island could hear the rumble of his voice and find their way back to the main attraction.

"Good luck, Goku, win it for sure!" Krillin cheered for his friend.

"Chayote's a tough cookie but I'll do my best!" Goku nodded with childish vigor.

"Are you listening, old man?" Chayote closed her eyes and thought in a manner that she thought would be the best suited for a telepath to listen in to. There was nothing. If Korin truly did teach Muten Roshi this technique, how come the old cat didn't teach it to Chayote too. It seemed like it was quite important and useful.

The Saiyan teen walked out into the arena and approached the edge, looking right at the wing of the audience where she had seen Bulma and her friends watch the matches earlier so that Muten Roshi could catch her need to talk. Deep down in her thoughts, Chayote repeated the question.

"I hear you…" she finally got a mental reply.

"I'm not going to hold back on your student. I hope you understand that. It would serve my mission best if he avoided death by a thin margin." Chayote warned the old man. "Don't come crying to me afterward and don't tell me that I can't train with you. You promised and we've set this clear, right?"

"Don't worry, I don't need you to hold back. Show Goku just how much space he still has to grow, show him the full extent of the interesting world, no, the universe, out there." Muten Roshi nodded while replying with his telepathy.

"Oh! Contestant Chayote appears to be staring at an old man in the crowd! What could this mean!?" the announcer tried to spin this to give more mystery to the battle about to unfold, given the showman that he was.

"That old timer? That's Muten Roshi…" Goku pointed at his master while looking at the announcer with a look that implied that Goku was talking to an utter moron. The boy must have seen this same look applied on him enough times for it to rub off on him.

"Oh! Ladies and gentlemen! I have just been informed that the man standing right there is none other than the great Muten Roshi, the reclusive and invincible martial arts master!" the announcer extended his hand at Muten Roshi who appeared to revel in the attention with a slight blush and a two-toothed grin.

"Peace, peace!" he cheered while extending both his middle and index fingers and making the peace gesture.

"Peace, peace!" Goku mirrored the gesture of his master with a simian grin on his face. The effort it took for the Saiyan boy to restrain his fit of laughter made him shake.

"Contestant Goku, you seem in good spirits! Does the might of Contestant Chayote not frighten you?" the announcer wondered with the entire audience cheering for the two to start fighting already.

"I'm just really excited to fight someone so strong!" Goku shook his fists in front of him with both his legs bent. Seeing the kid so fired up almost made Chayote show her excitement but the teen Saiyan managed to mask it. If she did get too excited, she may have ended up killing this boy and ruined everything once again.

"I see, finalists, take your places and your stances! Let the finals of the World Martial Arts Tournament begin!" the announcer declared. A prolonged silence of the grave variety reigned after his first prompt as a build up before the deafening gong ring and the declaration that the finals have begun.

Goku stood in his martial arts stance, he did not charge forward since the first bell, he was on the defensive, just what on Earth was he thinking? Chayote did not begin the match either. She did not have a full read on the extent of Goku's abilities meaning she had to take a few blows to get a feel on how hard she should have been trying to make it interesting, challenging and not to kill her opponent.

"With the thunderous gong, the final match is underway! You can feel the suspense rising in the air, ladies, and gents, who will win it all and who will leave home with nothing having walked most of the distance!? By everything, I, of course, mean the 500 000 Zeni prize money! I can hardly contain my excitement!" the announcer spun circles around the two frozen contestants like a vulture.

"Aren't you going to attack? It's better for weaklings to apply as much offensive pressure as possible. You can't hope to defend against my full power." Chayote taunted Goku.

"If I attack you, you'll just see how strong I am and weaken yourself to my level." Goku declared with fury brimming in his eyes as if what he was talking about was a cardinal sin. "I want to fight you at your full power!"

"Don't worry, I intend to show you my full power." Chayote stretched her shoulder out before resuming her fighting pose. "I intend to break you and then have you recover so I can break you again. I need to build up your strength before you can help me do the same."

Chayote's image blurred. Similarly to how an afterimage blurred out upon being hit but this time Chayote was not just using an afterimage. She attacking Goku head-on. An elbow strike dug into Goku's face, sending the kid Saiyan flying back like a rocket. Did she hit him too hard? She used maybe a quarter of her power by default, that was about how much she used to humiliate Taopaipai, could a Saiyan truly be weaker than an Earthling?

Had Goku flown a bit lower, he'd have hit the walls guarding the audience against the heat of the battle, the barrier that most of those thrown out of bounds would have hit. Worried that she might have ended the battle too early, Chayote dashed in. With a knee strike from below, she tried sending the brat aimed to hit the area outside of the ring up into the sky, where she could control the flow of battle more precisely.

Chayote's knee only passed through the air, dispersing the illusionary afterimage of her opponent, once again, executed even better than she did. Out of sheer instinct, Chayote grabbed her tail without clutching on it too hard so that she did not rob her own strength. Goku appeared on the other side of the ring, clutching at his jaw that was beaming red.

"Eeeeh! I hoped to catch you unprepared with that but… Damn, do you hit hard!" Goku shrieked out. His entire body was flailing like a pendulum from the daze that a single blow from Chayote sent his body to.

"You asked me to not mess around. You knew what you were getting into." Chayote stonewalled Goku's mid-battle compliment. Something was off, this battle did not flow right. She lowered her guard to worry about the kid not getting ringed out too fast and paid for it by him nearly blindsiding her. What if he did go for her tail?

"I know, right? I'm getting shivers!" Goku could barely contend the childish instinct to shriek in excitement while he picked himself off the ground and took a fighting stance with his jaw still swollen red.

"Now it's my turn to attack!" Goku declared. With a straightforward leap, he dashed right at his opponent, having apparently learned nothing from their previous exchange about the gap between their strength. Then again, he was doing exactly what Chayote thought he should have – rushing with whatever level of force he had to try and apply some relentless pressure.

With a careless smack, Chayote set off another afterimage fake-out. A powerful battle cry alerted the Saiyan teen to her pint-sized opponent jumping up in the air with an attempted cross-chop at her neck. If he thought that a mere repeated afterimage would provide him enough of an opening…

Chayote threw a wicked cross, she put enough force behind this one. If Son Goku was puny enough to get eliminated by such a puny strike, it was his fault entirely. She was done worrying about him. The reason why she did so, to begin with, was because she wanted a fun and challenging fight and only a Saiyan could have provided that.

Goku's image blurred out with the gust of air picking up from Chayote's strike dispelling the fake afterimage. The Saiyan realized that Goku pulled a double afterimage, only to realize that she was surrounded with afterimages. This was his answer to facing a more powerful and much faster opponent – try and match skills with her, not play a game of power or speed.

"Oh! Contestant Goku pulls an improved version of the Afterimage Technique, ironically enough, a maneuver he had taken from Chayote's handbook!" the announcer explained to the audience why there seemed to be an entire army of Gokus surrounding the other bemused Saiyan.

The afterimages and the real deal alike all attacked Chayote from different angles and directions. Even if Chayote was stronger and faster, she was not strong and fast enough to defend against all of them, even if only one of them was real. Goku's blows did not hurt too bad, at this pace, he would likely run out of breath before he left notable damage on her but Chayote couldn't stand the humiliation. She couldn't fall to a weaker opponent like this!

Lashing out in aggression was the wrong move. She only opened herself up, dispelled afterimages that soon reformed while the real Goku dashed in an out, switching between the fakes. Chayote could follow all of them with her eyes but without an ability to sense Goku's Ki or some event of blind luck she'd stand little chance of pinning the little bugger down.

"Rock!" Goku smacked at Chayote with an open palm. The Saiyan blocked it but failed to catch hold of the real Goku while he showed himself up to attack. The tiny Saiyan must have realized what Chayote was planning as he took longer than usual to show himself again, thinking and rethinking each of his moves twice.

"Paper!" Goku lunged for Chayote's eyes with two extended fingers. While all the afterimages attacked her as well, the Saiyan placed her palm positioned sideways in between her eyes and prevented Goku's fingers from reaching the most important target – her eyes. With the real Goku out and exposed, Chayote swiped a quick downward jab, clocking the little bastard so hard that his body bounced off the ground and positioned itself in mid-air in a prime opportunity for a stiff kick.

An opportunity that Chayote explored in full by sending Goku flying toward the edge. The kid Saiyan winced and cried out in pain but he clutched his thick but short fingers at the dirt and tiles of the arena before using his entire body to stop his flight and transition it into a nasty slide. With just half of his body remaining in the ring and the other half dangling close to the grass outside of it, it almost seemed like Goku was luring Chayote to follow up her attack.

"Oh! It appears Contestant Chayote has seen through Contestant Goku's deception!" the announcer declared.

"Deception?" the Saiyan teen wondered as she turned to the staff member of the World Martial Arts Tournament. "What do you mean, what deception!?"

"Why Contestant Goku's Rock-Paper-Scissors technique, of course!" the announcer nodded. "The one he used against Kaiju Giran!"

She knew she should have watched that fight! And yet, Chayote breathed easier. Even if she had wasted too much time to ask for a count now, she thought that the announcer had seen something in Goku's current, compromised position to imply he was blindsiding her. Something that, if true, would have frightened Chayote as it would have implied measly Earthlings were capable of seeing what she was not.

"That was a technique he used?" Chayote raised an eyebrow. It seemed irrelevant and weak to her in retrospect.

"Don't you know the game of Rock-Paper-Scissors!?" Krillin grabbed his head in disbelief.

"Of course she doesn't, she's a girl…" Yamcha postured at his smaller friend.

"Of course I don't, I'm an alien…" Chayote squinted at the two and then the announcer as he scratched his head and laughed.

"Yes, I assume switching rock, paper and scissors between one another would be meaningless against an actual alien…" the announcer nodded while emitting a faint chuckle.

Grunting and panting, Goku dragged his dangling body back into the arena and rose from the floor, one of his eyes beginning to swell enough to shut it down, his body covered with bruises from the dragging across the arena tiles and the smacking about its surface that he's been doing and half of his turtle gi was flat out torn off from the rough contact with the floor.

"Damn… There's no other way. You're a really strong girl, you'll survive this… KA!" Goku grumbled to himself while cupping both of his hands in front of himself.

It did not take supernatural Ki sensory abilities to sense the intense Ki pressure emanating from the child from the moment he began channeling his Ki right now. It would have seemed apparent that the lacking charge-up stance and the long time it took to launch his technique was a massive weakness but… With the frightening pressure emanating from Goku right now, nobody in their right mind would have come after him in mid-charge or else they risked being hit point-blank.

"ME-HA-ME!" Goku roared out as he placed his cupped hands by his side. A concentrated mass of Ki appeared in between his hands and began glowing with enough intensity to drown out the entire nearest area in bright whites and blues of solid, concentrated light.

"What's this feeling…" Chayote did not want to freeze in place but she could not help it, almost like something about this technique was kicking her senses into overdrive, warning her at an instinctual level to respect its awesome power.

"HA!" Goku yelled out while he threw his hands back out in front and unleashed his built up Ki in the shape of a destructive Ki wave that rushed right at the confused Saiyan teen.

The dominating pressure of the technique made Chayote's feet slide about the arena, the push of the force contained within the destructive Ki wave felt absolutely bonkers and at the first moments following the contact with the wave Chayote felt glad that she used her full power to block this technique or else she'd have been seriously injured or thrown out of the arena.

The wave kept pushing, that irritating, loud sound demanding every ounce of her attention and the triumphant, overwhelming light that drowned out everything Chayote could see. A mighty explosion drowned out the chaos of the final match with the Kamehameha wave detonating, unable to overcome the opposing force throughout its lifespan and therefore making all of the energy contained within just burst in the most violent way possible.

The entire audience, Krillin, Yamcha, and even Goku all cowered in front of the awesome destructive potential of Goku's full-powered blast. One that nearly decimated the entire arena and covered it in all-drowning clouds of dust and debris while grave silence reigned in shortly after the storm of violent devastation that came before.


	18. The Great Ape Debut

_**A shoutout to Bigshaq34 for noticing a small plot hole in Chapter 2. Not that I'd consider it a plot hole, though it technically is - it never really made sense to me how Kami flew to Earth on a spaceship operated solely in Namekian language, spoke perfect Namekian, regularly interacted with higher deities and yet was completely oblivious to his heritage. I know that the explanation to that is that Toriyama had not yet thought of the Namekians but given how much more involved the deities are in this scenario in the Universe 7's development, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that Kami would come to understand his unusual heritage. **_

_**Despite that, I need Chayote to remain oblivious to Kami's Namekian heritage for a little joke to work in the future so I fixed it by removing the N-word altogether. Let it be our little secret, pretty please :D**_

* * *

The first sign telegraphic the leave of the destruction from the Ki wave that Chayote had just withstood was the irritation of smoke and dust crawling up her nostrils. It was nothing that a Kiai with an erupting energy shockwave could not have helped with. After her bubbling might dispelled the aftermath of the Kamehameha, Chayote felt a light breeze on her shoulder with the evening winds creeping under her tracksuit.

She took damage!

A smirk twisted the face of the teenage Saiyan. Of course, it would be Goku of all people to harm her. It was only natural that a Saiyan would manage to inflict harm on her, despite the massive difference in power level. Chayote's hand reached up and grabbed her still hot zipper, pulling on it with a decent yank to the motion and ripping the whole busted thing off. Her tracksuit flowed behind her like a cape. Even her black undershirt was covered in minor tears.

"What a technique." Chayote breathed out the pent up tension from taking Goku's attack head-on. "And to think that I struggle with even the simplest Ki waves. If I did not notice the might of the technique and powered up to my limit just before it hit me – I may have been eliminated."

The natural fright of loss crept its way into Chayote's chest. It was a refreshing feeling like a rushing wave filled to the brim with salt but chilling to the bone that washed over her. She could have lost! It was not supposed to happen – she was so much stronger than Son Goku but… He could have beaten her if she underestimated him, just like he told her not to do.

"Amazing!" Goku shrieked out, his face shifted from a vexing refusal to believe what was transpiring in front of him, the first person to ever take a Kamehameha blast and not only survive but stay on their feet, into a realization of the sort of pinch he was in. "No one's ever taken the Kamehameha head-on! Rock-Paper-Scissors, Kamehameha… Nothing's workin'."

"Oh! Ladies and Gentlemen, Contestant Chayote has taken on the famous Turtle School Kamehameha attack and stayed on her feet! There's one thing nobody would have believed if you told them you'd seen here today!" the announcer explained the elementary elements of the fight before them to the audience.

"You're the amazing one…" Chayote smirked while staring at the jarring hole on her forearms where she had blocked the brunt of the technique with, mostly the right arm, the one that was on top in the X-shaped blocking stance she had put up. "Who would have known that Earthlings had ways to manipulate their power levels like that? However… My guess is that what comes around goes around. If that attack made you crazy strong for one large blast, your power level must have sunk like a brick now."

Goku chuckled, his childish cheer overcoming his shock and awe. "I've gotta admit, I've no idea what you're saying…" he expressed somehow through his chuckles.

Chayote prepared to dash at her opponent, hammer at him and finish him off. If she still wanted to win, there could have been no more hesitation. She's had her fun now. Goku had the lower power level meaning he needed a good Zenkai boost or two to catch up to Chayote. Then he would return the favor, Chayote felt sure about that.

Her movements felt stiffer, her arm trembled. With a shocked look, the teen Saiyan observed her stressed out body. Her own power level must have plummeted a bit after taking that attack too. Damn… It could not have been anything like what it would have taken to cause that sort of devastation and burrow this wicked scar all across the tournament arena from one corner to the other but the fact that someone so much weaker than Chayote managed to dent her at full power… That was not to continue.

"I'm gonna return the favor now!" Chayote declared, letting her weary body rest by at least halving her power and keeping some for reserve. She lacked experience using full power, she had never needed that on Earth. For all she knew she'd have gotten winded after a few moments fighting with all might, meaning she was better off keeping it at about fifty percent.

The Saiyan extended her palm forward. She could not afford another fiasco like against Nam. This was just like with Lima Spear, just long range… She pulled it off a bunch of times atop Korin's Tower but it was still inconsistent, not something that Chayote was very talented at, no matter how much she wanted to master Ki manipulation.

"Prepare yourself, Ki Energy Wave!" Chayote growled out while a puff of smoke left her hands.

Goku was having a blast. The relentless, simian-like cackling rounded him up and forced him to almost fall over. "You farted from your hands!" Goku somehow managed to squeeze out while his tail waggled to the sides like that of a dog that was all too excited for its own good. Chayote's face turned serious, her body flickered and disappeared altogether.

A backhand smack to launch her tiny opponent into the air, a barrage of crosses and jabs, an automated combo of strikes to keep him in the air while the stronger blows sapped the remaining life out of him. Finally, a double-handed ax handle strike slammed the Goku so hard to the ground that his body bounced off of it. Chayote restrained herself from kicking Goku out of bounds. At this point the boy was so pummeled that one more kick may have split his internals or made him burst like a balloon altogether.

"Start counting." Chayote turned to the freaked out announcer.

"I-I think he's… He's dead…" the announcer bellowed and hid behind the edge of the arena.

"How could you do that to him!?" Oolong yelled out from behind the barrier keeping the audience safe. "Isn't he from the same tribe as you or something?"

"G-Goku! It's dinner time, wake up!" Bulma continued to yell, her voice turning more and more dire with each repeated call.

"D…Din…" Goku twitched and even lifted his head up. Chayote's entire body froze as chills passed down her back and seeped all the way to the bottom of her hips. With a furious swipe of her hand, the Saiyan sent a rotating Ki blast, more of a spherical shape but a Ki attack nonetheless, at the downed boy. Whatever unexpected second wind he was experiencing, the blood-curdling scream and a lifeless sprawl suggested that he was out cold now.

"Check his pulse if you must. Count now though!" Chayote turned at the announcer. Her stare soaked the man with terror, forcing him to cower behind the corners of the arena himself while he crawled to Goku's side of the ring and then crawled onto it to slither closer and check on the boy's vitals, almost like a worm of some sorts.

"H…He's alive…" the announcer suggested after forcing Goku's whited out eyes open and examining his reaction to the flashlight he kept in his pocket. A mirror test also showed some steam building up when the man placed the tiny ellipse by Goku's mouth.

While initially, Chayote felt absolutely sure that her opponent had survived her relentless pummeling, this time she was not that sure. The Ki blast she launched she fired out of anger, the idea that this low-class Saiyan brat fired off into such a remote junkyard of a planet would dare stand up after her hearty attempt at putting him down filled Chayote with a burning passion to obliterate the humiliation before it rose to its feet.

"One!" the announcer started the count. "Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight…"

Chayote turned to the man, focusing her fleeting attention on him after he failed to clock in the next count.

"What's wrong? I thought Earthlings could at least count to ten?" the Saiyan growled with a speck of frustration. Much to Chayote's jolt, the announcer lifted his hand up and pointed at Goku who was writhing on the floor and clawing at his own throat, sitting up only to fall back down and continue writhing about the cracked and busted arena floor.

"What's… The Moon!" Chayote realized before turning at the Moon and then instantly closing her eyes. She kept her eyes closed until she turned them away from the gleaming early riser that caused the dreadful transformation in Goku. That imbecile just had to peel Goku's eyes open while he was lying flat on his back, didn't he!?

A supernatural force emanating from his own expanding body and skyrocketing Ki sent the morphing Goku up on his feet and then his fleshy bubble kept on growing and growing to seemingly no end. While for a while Chayote surmised she'd have what it takes to take on her opponent, even with his greatly reduced power level multiplied tenfold, by the time he began growing fur, Chayote was wondering about that.

The arena collapsed from underneath Goku's feet, crumbling into tiny specks of rubble while the teen Saiyan leaped upward and maintained herself above ground by launching successive Ki blasts at the ground, propelling her higher and higher and preventing her from crashing back down out of bounds. The mindless Great Ape had no such aspirations and while Chayote had won her match thusly, Goku's sudden transformation threatened far more than just that.

It was why Chayote could absolutely not give in to the temptation of transforming herself – who knew if she'd take on Son Goku or proceed to wipe the surface of the entire planet clean together with him. With her power multiplied tenfold she'd have little to no problem destroying this entire planet to a nebula of space gravel.

"Unbelievable! Contestant Son Goku has transformed himself into a giant ape monster! However… Yes! It appears that in doing so he has crushed the arena underneath his feet and landed on the ground! That's a ring out! A ring out!" the announcer kept on yelling to an audience fleeing for their lives.

"Hmph… You lot may enjoy fancy fisticuffs but this isn't that sort of case, is it? This would be an outright slaughter…" Chayote sighed to herself while observing the Earthlings flee. The retreating wave threatened to drown out Bulma, Puar and Oolong and was carrying them away from the battlefield, that was for the better.

The Great Ape roared as a show of its mindless state. Blind and fair fury that made anyone experiencing it wonder if it was the drastic increase in size and musculature that granted the Great Ape its tenfold increased strength or it was the change in the mental state. Luckily for Chayote, crushing her was the last thing on the Great Ape's mind. The first deed of the transformed great monstrosity was to smash the waiting building, rip its rooftop clean off and then hurl it out beyond where one's eyes could even pick it up any longer.

"Yamcha!" Chayote yelled out, looking at the collapsing building. Yamcha and Krillin were observing the fights from there. They may have been pinned down by the debris.

"Let's go!" Yamcha's voice reached Chayote shortly before she landed onto the arena, the tiles ground to dust and the clay mixed in with the dirt to form one, molten, brown mass that stank of sweat and molasses.

"B-But Goku…" Krillin's voice trembled.

"He can't control himself, he crushed his grand… Son Gohan like this…" Yamcha tried to explain before the transformed Son Goku began roaring wildly into the evening sky, pounding the life out of his chest in blind rage as the beast was running out of things to smash, which meant he was just a pair of instances short of noticing the little ants running about on ground level.

"I'll hit him with my best shot, you two move and join Bulma, Puar and Oolong." Chayote growled.

"Wait, no! You'll kill him!" Yamcha objected. "We've stopped him before, you just have to…"

"Seriously? You're going to explain me that!?" Chayote nearly ripped the sides of her hair out in irritation. "I will try to blindside him and rip his tail off, I'll try to. I don't want to kill him but… I don't know Ki blasts nearly well enough to blast the Moon."

"You do!" Yamcha raised his fists up while the group was trying to come up with a plan before the Great Ape stops stomping the ground and beating the shit out of its own chest and turns its attention to the remainder of human life present in the vicinity. "The Kamehameha. When Goku first saw Muten Roshi perform it, it only took him one try to grasp it."

"It's a long shot but it's better than killing the brat." Chayote nodded. "Get Muten Roshi here. If I fail, he will need to blast the Moon for me. Even if I am strong enough to hold Son Goku off for now, after I use the Kamehameha, failed or not, my power level will take a dive. I'll do what I can to give him an opening though."

"I'll get Puar and Oolong. They're shapeshifters, they can cut off Goku's tail." Yamcha nodded and ran off towards where the crowd flooded to.

"I'll find Muten Roshi!" Krillin nodded and followed Yamcha's example.

It may have been the eye-catching colorful contrast of Krillin's uniform that caught the Great Ape's eye and forced it to turn toward the two fleeing martial artists who appeared like insects to Goku in his current size. The distraction allowed Chayote to soar up all the way to the beast's chest with a winded up fist. There were few sounds that made the Saiyan teen more delighted than when she heard a Great Ape roar out in pain and shock from her blow – she still had some juice left in her!

The Great Ape swiped its hand downward in an attempt to swipe at Chayote but the Saiyan fired a Ki blast to the side to redirect herself while she used her tail to latch onto one of Goku's massive fingers and float atop of his hand. What was to follow was a long and frightening trip all the way to the monster's jaw… With a single blitz, Chayote whizzed up to Goku's jaw and clocked him, sending the Great Ape crashing down on the ground. That would give her the time to land unimpeded.

"Alright, let's see now…" Chayote looked up at the Moon and cupped her hands, just like Goku did earlier against her. "Ka… Me… Ka… Me… Ha!"

Chayote's entire body lit up with an intense glow of Ki, for a moment the Saiyan thought that it may have worked. Such an elementary concept of just concentrating all of her Ki towards her hands. There was no way that it would not have worked. Shortly after leaving Chayote's body, the destructive wave curved and coiled about before blasting off into a random direction in space.

Darkness. White. Shrieking noises, sounds of people sparring, punches and kicks bouncing off of flawless blocks and roaring Ki blasts ravaging the fields. Chayote opened her eyes. She had a face full of dirt and was sprawled out on the ground with her face looking down. Every single muscle she could think about, any of the useful ones she tried to move ached and didn't respond. A single look upward revealed Son Goku towering over her with his foot raised for another stomp.

Before the second stomp could land, Chayote resigned herself to fighting until her last moment. She placed her hands over the ground and fired off another Ki blast, propelling herself up into the air. Her Ki control was nowhere near enough to consistently fire off destructive energy waves but if she could fire off those little shockwaves and balls, that would have been just enough!

Chayote met the crushing stomp with a reckless headbutt of her own. It did not do any damage but the Great Ape looked surprised by the considerable resistance from the person it had considered a victim rather than an equal opponent which sent it tumbling on its back. The beast's mindless state only adding onto the confusion.

"Completely mindless… A low-class Saiyan as expected…" Chayote huffed to herself after falling down onto the ground and crawling a bit further away to begin her struggle to rise up to her feet. "Sadly, my case would not be any different…" she lamented. She had not once transformed into her Great Ape form, however, she'd have known from the way other Saiyans treated her if she was an elite or not. Even as a baby, someone like prince Vegeta had a higher power level than Chayote in her prime back on Planet Vegeta.

A wave of blinding light overwhelmed Chayote. A force that resonated from a beam far far away managed to pick the injured Saiyan up and fling her even further across the decimated field as a mighty booming sound in the sky would have made anyone within a two-hundred-kilometer radius believe that the sky was splitting and the world was ending. Once the light stopped and disappeared, the sky was black and red and flickering space dust remained where the Moon once was.

Chayote turned to the side, seeing a bulky, shirtless old man in the Kamehameha state. Frozen as if moving after firing a beam such as this one would have called for more stamina than the old man had to give at that moment.

"Don't feel bad, kid. Yamcha sold the Kamehameha short, it took me fifty years to master it. It would be troublesome to someone as green as you, even if it only took Goku one try to nab it." Muten Roshi smirked.

"What the hell!? How are we supposed to cut his tail off when he's lying on his butt!?" a talking chainsaw with cartoonish eyes cursed its luck alongside a floating pair of scissors with a similar set of outrageous facial features, ridiculous even if they did not belong to a pair of scissors.

"Relax… Goku's transforming back now." Muten Roshi stated while finally regaining limited freedom of movement and deflating back to his old and shriveled self. With his buffed state gone, the old man had the stamina, at last, to point at Goku who was losing hair and calories at a drastic pace while also losing all traces of the mad, simian features he once possessed.

With a loud poof, Puar and Oolong revealed themselves from a cloud of smoke to have been the floating cutting tools, sent by Yamcha to cut off Goku's tail. This must have been how the Earthlings stopped Goku from decimating their planet before. In that state, it would have taken even a pathetic excuse for a Saiyan as Son Goku one night to not leave a stone atop another stone on the entire planet. Just a smoldering, lifeless rock… The way Lord Frieza likely intended this planet to be left like.

"Now that the tournament over, I'm sure you will wish to talk." Muten Roshi smiled while extending his hand to help Chayote up. The Saiyan extended her right hand out only for the old man to lean lower and try to slip his grab onto her chest. He underestimated Chayote's speed, even in her current state. It only took a smack without much force put into it to send Roshi flying into whatever wreckage still remained in the devastated Papaya Island.


	19. Plans on Sunbathing

"How could you be so brutal with him?" Bulma objected, pointing at the bandaged yet sleeping peacefully Son Goku sleeping in the Papaya hospital that, despite the short-lived rampage of the world-breaking monster transpiring on the same island, was not only in a functional condition but not even overcrowded. People were lucky to leave as early as they did.

"To beat another Saiyan half-to-death is the greatest honor a Saiyan can have." Chayote replied without much emotion to it. Almost as nonchalantly as she would have explained where the Sun rose from and where it set.

"That's so horrible!" Puar grabbed its fluffy cheeks.

"You might think so." Chayote closed her eyes and breathed in deep. She finished that thought while she exhaled. "However, to a Saiyan, strength is everything."

"I don't get it, how does crippling each other makes you guys stronger?" Krillin squinted at Chayote. Goku's life was not in any immediate danger now which was why the crew still looked distrustful of Chayote but felt calm enough to have a conversation about the intricacies of the cultural differences of a faraway alien race that both Goku and Chayote came from.

"You wouldn't." Chayote shook her head. "It is called Zenkai. It is an ability that all Saiyans share, we grow stronger with each battle. The closer we get to death – the stronger we become. If a battle is boring, there is often no growth whatsoever. Yuca, my instructor back on Planet Vegeta, told me that if a Saiyan is not driven to an inch to their death Zenkai will not come into play but… I have a feeling she was wrong. Sometimes it seems like Zenkai makes itself known all throughout a fight as if I am growing stronger while I am fighting. I've no idea why Yuca would have wanted to keep that hidden, maybe she did not know it either."

"I guess that explains why you two are so eager to get into fights." Bulma squinted at Chayote. She then turned an angry glare at Yamcha too. "Sometimes you're so one-track-minded that I think you might be a Saiyan as well!"

"Awww, come on, Bulma, now that the tournament's over we can spend more time together, we talked about this, remember?" Yamcha tried excusing himself as if he had something to excuse himself about. What a strange guy, why would he feel so obliged to lower himself in front of this woman for having his priorities set perfectly straight?

Then it popped to Chayote – Yamcha must have wanted Bulma to invent something for him. Maybe not a spacecraft like the one Chayote would have fancied but something he could have used. Perhaps a machine that removed his fear of women?

"Saiyans are really scary…" Oolong lamented. "Is this Planet Vegeta nearby? Two of them have already landed and nearly totaled the whole place, what if more of those guys come?"

"There's almost no chance of that happening." Chayote shook her head, growing visibly more bitter and distressed as she affirmed her own worst fears. "I don't know the exact location of this planet in the scale of the entire universe but… Judging from what I've heard, it's on the whole opposite side of the galaxy from the edge of Lord Frieza's Empire. There's no chance of Saiyans finding us here, not until we reach out to them first."

Everyone sighed easier.

"Not for a decade at least…" Chayote sighed again in disappointment while everyone else lost their collective shits.

"A decade!? That's not that far off!" Bulma yelled out at Chayote, attempting to make the teen cower and bend to her authoritative and loudmouthed influence just like the rest of the crew did. While Chayote considered being nice to the brilliant inventor lady of the planet, she'd rather never meet another Saiyan for a dozen more years rather than give up her Saiyan pride.

"This Lord Frieza… He sounds troubling." Muten Roshi turned serious all of a sudden. Something dark flashed through the man's eyes as if he recalled a gruesome and hopeless meeting with another tyrannical overlord. While Chayote was just shooting from the hip, if her assumptions were correct, this may have been an intriguing opponent to meet. Now that Chayote cemented herself as the strongest under this planet's heavens, she'll be severely bored for the coming decades.

"He's not. He rules over everything. Takes everything good and useful under his wing. Kills and destroys the useless things. I've only met him once really but I've been trained to serve him my entire life. I'd like my second impression to be that of a more useful soldier compared to the lacking first one." Chayote looked away. For some reason returning to the fateful day of her demise, even if her memories of some details leading up to and after her death were all murky, caused something round and sticky to get stuck in her throat while her eyes started watering for no reason.

It was a despicable feeling, it reeked of weakness.

Muten Roshi stared at Chayote in silence. There must have been something he meant to tell her, his grim expression was similar to when the old sage spoke with his mind as he did earlier, but even as Chayote maintained an open mind she received no signals from him. The silence, the loneliness made her feel even more grumpy.

"Anyway. Son Goku will be fine." Chayote stuffed her hands into the pockets of her torn up pants. She needed a complete change of wardrobe before she'd head off to her next adventure. Maybe that prize money that the announcer gave her would help do the trick? Perhaps she could purchase an actual military uniform and not don what true soldiers on Earth wore when they exercised in the mornings?

"How will he be fine? Look at him!" Bulma complained but her attempts at guilt tripping Chayote was only met with a devoid of any emotion stare back at her own eyes.

"Saiyans recover quite fast. Keep a steady supply of food coming and Son Goku will be back on his feet in no time." The teen Saiyan shrugged before heading to the door.

"Chayote." Muten Roshi's voice stopped her. "I'll be waiting for you on my island. It's located at NBI 8250012 B. Despite what you might think after winning the World's Martial Arts Tournament, there is plenty I can teach you. Not things of the body but things to strengthen your mind and help you see the world more clearly. Arguably, this is the more important aspect of a truly magnificent martial artist."

"Nobody to say so many words can be wrong." Chayote shrugged with a naughty childish smirk. "Training with you was my plan all along. There may be a few more things left to see on Earth anyway."

"I for one am glad that somebody's gonna do something about that attitude!" Bulma wrapped her hands over her chest with a glare aimed at Chayote full of disdain. The Saiyan did not even need to turn back or have a supernatural sense of emotion reading to feel all that heat emanating at her.

Before Chayote could leave the ward, she turned around and approached Bulma. The genius girl took a wary step back, nervous that the Saiyan would lash out after taking one too many offenses to heart but Chayote halted up in Bulma's face just a bit short of where she could have smashed her head in. The Saiyan extended a hand full of money.

"I am not good with Earthling currency. Is this much money enough to build a spacecraft capable of traveling to the other end of the galaxy?" the Saiyan took a wild shot.

"Huh? It's barely even one-tenth of what you would need. Also, obviously, it is not a matter of resources but the matter of technology. You implied your kind was a spacefaring race? If I had a decent sample of your technology, I could build you your craft just for the kicks. Hell, I'd probably enjoy the challenge." Bulma winked at Chayote as if the two had been friends all along. It was odd how little it took to get a genius on one's better side.

"You could collect the Dragon Balls and ask the Shenron for a spacecraft, couldn't you?" Oolong wondered. Bulma looked at him with eyes that aimed to incinerate the swine whole. The azure-headed inventor likely did not want a wild card Saiyan that recklessly beat her own kind to unconsciousness to know about these Dragon Balls.

"Dragon Balls? Those are some sort of wishing device, right?" Chayote wondered, recalling a handful of vague comments made by Commander Red before he met his demise by her hand.

"You know about Dragon Balls!?" everyone in the room lost their cools.

"Sure. The leader of the Red Ribbon Army tried recruiting me into his weakling force to help him gather them. He said he would have a genius scientist build me a ship home when we're done." Chayote shrugged.

"The Red Ribbon?!" the entire room flipped out once more.

"What's all the ruckus about?" Goku sat up, rubbing his eyes with his childish little knuckles. He appeared to struggle with the comfort of the bandages wrapped over his head selectively, only to cover up the injuries he had attained during the match.

"Goku! You're alright!" Krillin jumped up and crawled up on Goku's bed to nudge the brat about, Goku looked in high spirits about it before grunting in pain and pushing Krillin off of him.

"Everybody needs to slow down. This is way too much stuff happening all at once…" Yamcha complained while removing his headband and using it to wipe the sweat off of his face. "Now, did Chayote just claim she beat the Red Ribbon Army all by herself?"

"Sure. Technically, they wiped themselves out for the most part but none of them were any strong at all." Chayote shrugged.

"That would explain the troubling raiding activities far out in the north, the south and the west…" Muten Roshi stroke his beard. "With the headquarters of the Red Ribbon destroyed, the rest of the generals must be growing restless and suspecting something. The Red Ribbon must have more bases established all over the world and none of them are getting any orders from the headquarters. In the worst case scenario, you can get a whole bunch of different splinter groups operating all at once."

"And Chayote said they're all after the Dragon Balls…" Bulma sighed. "At this point, I won't ever get my strawberries…"

"I thought you were in it for a boyfriend…" Oolong turned at the inventor who proceeded to pound the anthropomorphic pig in the head with frightening brutality.

"Are you kidding me?! I've got Yamcha, don't I!?" the harpy showed her teeth as if she threatened to devour the pig bit by stringy bit.

"Wait, you guys also are after the Dragon Balls?" Chayote raised an eyebrow. "Aren't they super hard to find?"

"Normally they would be!" Bulma smiled with a larger than life amount of pride in her own self brimming from within. "However, the elegant genius that is moi has created a Dragon Radar to track them!"

"I see, the Red Ribbon Army likely had one of their own…" Chayote made Bulma's balloon burst with the genius deflating to a pathetic state of self-pity once it was revealed that her invention had not been unique for even a couple of years before the rest of the world caught up to it. "If I collect those Dragon Balls and ask the Shenron for a spaceship, we can leave Earth then? That seems like a plan…"

"Wait… You're leaving?" Goku turned fussy over the first news he heard after waking up from unconsciousness. "I thought we'd get to fight again and train with each other! Plus, you can't use the Dragon Balls because I still haven't found my Grandpa yet!"

"So you want to use the Dragon Balls first to find your grandpa? Wait… I thought you kill…" Yamcha shut Chayote's mouth before she could finish that sentence. He really needed to stop doing that but Chayote did not feel like punishing the dolt like she punished Muten Roshi for getting handy earlier.

"The Four-Star Dragon Ball is his grandpa," Bulma explained. Or at least she thought it did, none of either that or Goku's objection made even a tiny lick of sense. "It's what his grandpa left behind, it's all that Goku has to remember him by."

"Hmm? Why would you want to remember your fake Earthling grandpa? In a manner of speech he kidnapped and brainwashed you…" Chayote scratched her head.

"It's because Goku is a nice person with a heart!" Bulma yelled at Chayote again. While it was regrettable of a multitude of levels that Yamcha was in a relationship with this siren, the two had a habit of doing things Chayote wanted they'd stop doing and boundaries they must have stopped crossing at once that sort of befit each other. "Not that you'd understand…" Bulma looked away with disdain.

"That's not true." Goku pointed at Chayote. "Chayote's a really kind person too. I felt it when we fought."

"Was it before or after she beat the snot out of you?" Bulma turned her angry glare at Goku for speaking what she took as utter gibberish.

"That hurt…" Goku rubbed his aching spots but then began chuckling and moving his body as if responding to a slow, melodious tune with a sense of childish glee. "But she's not evil. That much I can say. She took the Kamehameha even though she could have moved away and let it blow the audience up and hurt other people."

"That's… That was just a coincidence, I'm sure… She probably just wanted to show off and happened to save everybody in the process!" Bulma objected again.

"Can we stop this useless discussion and return to the matter of the Dragon Balls?" Chayote sighed. The topic at hand made her feel uneasy and itchy deep down, for whatever reason. "Why can't both of us get what we want?"

"Because the Dragon Balls scatter after they are used and then remain as ordinary stones for a year," Bulma replied as if it was common knowledge she was getting tired of explaining. "If you ask the Shenron for your spacecraft, Goku will lose the chance of returning his Four-Stars for one year."

"There is a conundrum then…" Chayote sighed deeper and with more ingrained gloom. "Are you sure you can't let me ask for my spaceship and then get your Four-Star Dragon Ball a year later?"

"Nu-uh! I've already waited for a year!" Goku objected. "Can't you and Bulma just build your spaceship if you two make up?"

"Tsk… If Chayote knew about the technology her race uses, maybe together we could put something together but she's a blockhead like you!" Bulma yelled at Goku for even daring suggesting that the two made up. Then again, it was hard to say if Bulma even knew why exactly she was not too fond of the Saiyan, to begin with.

"I do know a bit." Chayote shrugged. "Even the gutter trash of the Frieza Army are meant to be able to repair the ships and weaponry. Let's just say I was hardly an elite class soldier, it was more than likely that I would have been an over glorified engineer…"

"Wait… Seriously!?" Bulma's eyes lit up with shimmering novae. "In that case, you must visit West City after you're done training with Roshi! Think of what an intelligent adventurer like me could build with your aid!?"

"As long as that something includes my spaceship…" Chayote shrugged. "I can give you basic rundowns of how scouters, arm-cannons, spaceships, hover chairs and the like work."

"So, I guess, you won't be needing the Dragon Balls after all?" Goku wondered.

"Well, I could have always asked this Shenron for more power but… Just how much power could a deity of a planet like Earth truly give me? It is unlikely to be a worthwhile bother." Chayote shook her head. "Just remember to train with me proper after you recover. We will need many Zenkai power-ups to catch up for all the time we have wasted so far."

"I can't wait!" Goku nodded before clutching at his ribs again.

Chayote looked at the massive pile of money she still clung to with her hand. The Saiyan placed most of the money on the cupboard by Goku's bed and turned back for the door. "I have no use for this money either, in that case. I'll buy myself some new clothes, use the rest to eat up and get your strength back. After I'm done training with Muten Roshi, I'll be expecting some serious training."

Goku nodded with a smile. "While you're training, I'll make sure to beat up those remaining Red Ribbon generals!" he declared. "If I can't do that, I won't ever be able to stand up to you in the future! Plus, they're after Dragon Balls anyway, right?"

"Sounds like a waste of time to me, they're a bunch of weaklings but… Do whatever you like." Chayote shrugged.

"That's just great, while Goku gets over his downtime, I'll make sure to catch up to you!" Krillin declared, extending his fist as a challenge to Goku. "Maybe I'll even train with Chayote, as scary as she is!"

"I guess I could use a punching bag…" Chayote looked down and put her hands into her pockets that all had a handful of holes now.

"In that case… Muten Roshi, please train me as well!" Yamcha bowed his head. "I've seen first-hand how far Goku has gone in these last few years. If I let things develop as they are, I would never catch up to Goku but this injury may have given me a chance get back to his league, please!"

"Are you even listening to what you're saying!? I thought we were going to start going out on dates and stuff after the tournament's over!" Bulma unveiled her imposing, demonic presence that loomed over poor and shriveled Yamcha.

"Awww, come on, Bulma… Muten Roshi lives on an island in the middle of an ocean. It's a pretty neat holiday location if you asked me. You could spend some time sunbathing and just flat out bathing… It's a pretty sweet deal, isn't it?" Yamcha pleaded his case.

Chayote wondered if an esteemed master of martial arts like Muten Roshi would truly go for such a useless for him deal. He did not look like the type that took in just about anybody. However, the elementary first glance revealed the legendary Muten Roshi drooling with a blush on his face with his shades nearly slipped off of his nose completely.

"Yeah, yeah… You can all sunbath… I mean… Train!" he slurred.

It appeared that Chayote would still have to sit through a decent chunk of this tomfoolery before she could truly return to her rightful place in Lord Frieza's army.


	20. Dressed to Impress

"I'm a little bit glad that your old fighting attire got tattered during the tournament!" Muten Roshi declared with a proud shine on his shades. At least now, seeing the almost resort-like conditions that the old timer lived in, Chayote could somewhat rationalize his choice of accessories.

"Say that to my face…" the Saiyan grumbled, giving the old man her best sudden-death-inducing stare.

"No… I mean… If it didn't get torn, you'd have never gotten the chance to try out the patented Kame-Sennin fighting uniform!" Roshi shook his hands out in front of him as if deflecting the imaginary barrage of strikes that Chayote threw his way. The old timer turned around and burrowed in oversized luggage. Given how the Earthlings had nearly limitless storage capacity technology, one that was entirely unique throughout the universe, as far as Chayote had experienced it, the old master's choice for storage of his prized relic seemed foolish.

"Oh no…" Krillin smacked his forehead. Bulma lifted her own shades and sat up from her sunbathing chair. While she appeared to be uninterested in most fighting matters, the brilliant inventor was thoroughly entertained by Muten Roshi's attempts at hyping up his famed uniform.

"Behold!" Muten Roshi roared as he pulled out black and pink lingerie and raised it into the air.

While Chayote's eyes gleamed with a nova similar to the reflections of sunlight on Muten Roshi's own shades before, the thud from Bulma's side of the beach distracted the Saiyan. With surprising swiftness for an Earthling who was a stranger to martial arts, Bulma loomed over Roshi with fire and fury emanating from her very essence. Had this Earthling any hidden martial arts potential, surely rage such as this one would have amplified it tenfold.

"That's just underwear, you old perv!" Bulma yelled out. "As if I'm letting you make an unsuspecting alien girl wear that!"

"It's not just underwear, it's the Turtle School Uniform and for your information, Goku and Krillin both also trained in them!" Muten Roshi snapped back at the bloodthirsty rage monster up in his face.

"Well… Muten Roshi's methods may be unconventional but… Goku and Krillin got this strong training under him…" Yamcha patted his non-existent chest, having slipped into lingerie that was entirely too small for him but his trained pecks compensated for the lack of upper pride of the female forms.

"You imbecile!" Bulma switched the target of her anger toward Yamcha and began chasing him around the island, insistent on tearing the Turtle School Uniform off of her boyfriend's body.

"B-Bulma, be reasonable now if you tear this off, I'll be naked!" Yamcha pleaded with his girlfriend as he ran laps around the Kame House. It was an odd Earthling habit to name one's houses but at least Muten Roshi had the decency of painting the name of his house on the front. Chayote had missed out finding out the names of so many Earthling homes over the time she's spent on Earth.

The Saiyan did not even notice the odd twitch to the tips of her lips, the shifting of her face and the adoption of a happy expression as she observed Yamcha having possibly the most intense training of his life running laps.

"You can feel it, can't you? The meaning you needed. You speak about wiping the Earth clean, about joining with the other Saiyans and the Frieza Army but… I wonder if you truly need that anymore?" Roshi's thoughts popped into Chayote's own mind. With a mindful and forced end to her goofy smirk, the Saiyan turned back at Roshi.

"Keep pushing it and I won't mind the fact you're still useful to me. I'll eliminate you in an instant." Chayote concentrated on her own thoughts so that the old man could see them crystal clear. No matter how hard she concentrated on them, it did not seem like she herself could see them as clear as she wanted to transmit them.

"While you're demonstrating some impressive speed that would have served you well in the tournament, how about finally getting some training done?" Muten Roshi addressed Yamcha who stopped all of a sudden.

"Really? I can't wait!" Yamcha raised both of his fists and pressed his arms against his sides in excitement. One that would have looked way more badass had he not been wearing pink and black lingerie while expressing it.

"For starters, I need to see if you can even handle the training. Both of you spar with Chayote, that way Chayote will catch onto your martial arts mastery and even up with your skill while the absolute death behind her will force your bodies to approach your limits and break past them in terms of power, speed, and endurance." Muten Roshi instructed.

"Wait, I need to prove myself too? But I've already done your training? Can't I just skip to the real thing?" Krillin squinted at Roshi.

"You fool! Son Goku is on his Kinto Un right now, not even completely recovered from his injuries and he's already scouring the world, looking for the next challenge and his grandpa's Dragon Ball! If you slack around and take shortcuts, you'll fall even farther behind!" the Turtle Hermit scolded his pupil. "The very fact that you even insisted on taking a shortcut in your training tells me I may have rushed you through your training."

Chayote bobbed and weaved around Yamcha's Wolf Fang Fist, observing the immense speed that fueled his relentless attacks. She may have focused too hard on it, given how Krillin's sweep kick from behind caught her unprepared. Yamcha jumped up and pursued Chayote with the full intent of hitting her while she was down. That was just fine with Chayote – she was not going to accept anything being held back.

Yamcha's reach was too long. His barrage of Wolf Fang Fist strikes forced the Saiyan on the defensive, placing her hands in a blocking position while she weathered the storm. Not that it was that difficult, Yamcha's attacks were quite swift but, not unlike King Chappa's technique, which was, in fact, more advanced than Yamcha's own signature technique, he was all speed and no substance.

A powerful shockwave of escalating Ki emanated from Chayote's body, creating an invisible orb that could only have been perceived by the dust it had picked up and the brutality of how it swatted both of the Turtle School pupils aside. Chayote rose on her feet, finally having measured Yamcha's exact strength and powered up to the degree where she would have beaten him but with enough challenge to show potential to make her power grow some more in the process.

Chayote charged onward, utilizing the space in between when she blasted Yamcha aside with her Kiai roar and when Yamcha recovered but just before she could begin to punish her opponent, the Saiyan froze and looked down at the Turtle School Uniform. The Saiyan broke her stance and stretched her uniform a bit further so that the breeze of moving around did not get so close to feeling uncomfortable.

"I've heard that Frieza's elite wear shorter bodysuits that don't get in the way with how tight they are but… This feels really awkward…" Chayote complained. "I think I'd rather wear those orange uniforms Son Goku and Krillin had at the tournament."

"Well, that's too bad, they don't grow on trees. You'll have to make do with these for now unless you want to wear those clothes you've bought with your cut of the tournament money?" Muten Roshi fixed his shades with a slight blush on his cheeks.

"No. Training will make me go through a bunch of different clothes, I'd rather save them for the real deal." The teenage Saiyan sighed.

Fighting Yamcha and Krillin when they got into their zone was frustrating. While Chayote felt like she had a dominating edge in terms of raw power and even speed, it felt like it did not matter in the slightest. The two were just too slippery, it was almost like they were reading her mind. Krillin, in particular, was exceptionally skilled in utilizing his pint-size with clever rolls and flips and hops to avoid Chayote's power strikes as well as manage space. Yamcha even pulled off multiple Afterimage Technique uses out of sheer fear for his life, proving Muten Roshi right about a deadly challenge pushing their bodies to their limits and then past them.

At one point, Chayote snapped, with a roar that escalated and supercharged the immense aura around her, the Saiyan just disappeared into thin air and smacked Krillin in the forehead with her knee and then thrust her elbow right at the lower chin of Yamcha, sending both of them down on the ground, twitching and grunting in pain.

This was not her training power. It was not even her entertainment power, she'd never receive a single Zenkai power-up at this pace but, for whatever reason, at that time Chayote's Saiyan pride was more important than mere ambition for power. Fighting on an even playing field made her feel humiliated by the vast difference in martial arts skill still present between the three and Chayote was not too fancy about being humiliated by a bunch of lousy Earthlings.

"This is pointless. They're better martial artists than me and I'm stronger and faster than them. Unless you finally teach me martial arts and train their bodies to get stronger, this won't change no matter how many times we spar." Chayote flipped out. An orange gleam passed through her dark pupils, a true blink and you'll miss it moment, however, despite his old age and thick shades, Muten Roshi was not a man that missed much.

"Can you perform the Kamehameha? A weak one, just one that spans across this ocean here?" Muten Roshi asked with a sense of calm.

"I tried, the blast just waves around and darts off wherever…" Chayote grumbled. She did not understand how bringing up something that only accentuated that Roshi was focusing on all the wrong things in her training would help his case.

Just for the sake of argument, the Saiyan cupped her hands together and drew them back to her hips while leaning her body forward from her waist up. "Ka…Me…Ha…Me…" she yelled out. Any attempts to mirror Goku's Ki manipulation when he performed the move were pointless when she could not sense or understand Ki yet. Regardless, as always, her sheer power pulled her through. A shimmering orb of pure energy formed in her cupped hands.

"Ha!" Chayote roared out while thrusting her arms forward. The ball expanded into an intense aura of blinding light that enveloped her entire body. Instead of the concentrated mass of Ki erupting outward in the shape of a destructive wave, the entire blob of bursting aura erupted outward in the direction that Chayote forced it out. Like a spring on drugs, the wave contracted into a thinner and much looser projectile that then sprung into an unpredictable direction, this time, diagonally upward to the right where it exploded after traveling a decent distance from the source.

"Can you do it, Krillin?" Roshi turned to the tiny warrior who blushed and began shaking off responsibility. When the old man insisted, the student took the pose he saw Goku take when using the move and repeated the movements but only a puff of smoke left his hands.

"It's no good…" Krillin sighed while his eyes showed signs of great weariness.

"No, your technique was flawless but your physical aspect of Ki has taken a dip since Chayote beat you up. If you practice, after recovering, you should not be too far away from picking the technique up." Roshi shook his head while stroking his beard.

"You took that as more successful than what I've done?" Chayote raised a curious eyebrow.

Without replying, Muten Roshi turned to Yamcha. "What do you think? You've taken some damage as well but perhaps you have more guts in you than Krillin, mind to take a shot?"

Yamcha nodded without a word. He did not rush his try. First, the martial artist entered a standing fighting pose with his right arm extended and bent over his head while the left one mirrored the exact same position but inversed downward. The young man moved his hands and his entire arms as if it was a curious swimming technique of sorts. His movements flowed. Chayote knew what that was – Yamcha was concentrating.

"Ka!" Yamcha opened his eyes, cupping his hands out in front of him. "Me!" he drew his hands back and brought his body back with his hips while leaning forward himself. "Ha!" Yamcha strengthened his pose, it was the phase where he let loose the energy residing in his body while still giving his heartiest effort to not break his stance. "Me!" a massive blob of shining Ki formed in Yamcha's hands, erupting with about the same amount of light as when Goku and Chayote used the technique.

"Ha!" Yamcha roared out while thrusting his hands out, the Ki mass swirled for a while, remaining stationary but it fired out a minuscule energy wave akin to the simplest forms of Ki manipulation but gleaming with the signature white-blue shine of the Turtle Destruction Wave. The blast was not by any means powerful – it had barely managed to split a patch of the ocean but it served its intended purpose.

It was the world's puniest Kamehameha but it was one nevertheless.

"Do you know why Yamcha succeeded where you, a vastly superior combatant, have failed?" the Turtle Hermit wondered.

"Don't congratulate me too hard…" Yamcha rustled his hair with his hand while looking down. This was the most pathetic he looked after a victory in his entire life. "Throw that around the whole time, why won't you?"

"Because somebody bothered to teach him about Ki manipulation instead of forcing him to spar with a pair of weaklings, wasting his time?" Chayote grumbled.

"It's because he is exactly where he needs to be and he knows it!" Muten Roshi stepped forth right in front of Chayote's face and he did not care that he did not measure up in terms of height to the Saiyan who was still in her mid-teens.

"I'd like to be out in space, serving by Lord Frieza's side but I can't…" Chayote sighed. She did not fight back or complain, her voice sounded almost as beaten as somebody outperformed by a mere gynophobic Earthling should have sounded like.

"No!" the Turtle Hermit slammed his staff into the ground. Bulma sat up and removed her earphones for a second as even she picked up the intense atmosphere coming from the master and his unruly pupil. "You don't understand. It's because you're not one in body and mind that your Ki control is not consistent. When you feel content with your life, when you're sure of your choices and when you're moving toward your own happiness, when your heart is pure, not necessarily with innocence but with anything that defines you, that is when a martial artist is whole. Ki is equal part body and mind, if you keep lying to yourself about your true intentions and confusing your mind, you will never achieve true Ki manipulation."

"The other kids blasted Saibamen with their Ki blasts without trouble." Chayote recalled watching the other recruits training with the cultivated warriors while instructor Yuca held her back from endangering her life.

"That's because they were absolutely sure of their intentions. They did not declare themselves heroes or harbor false promises of world peace when doing it. It might be the easiest for rotten people, people who are evil by nature and all they need to bathe in that power is to accept their true selves. However, it is in the kind-hearted souls that Ki manipulation truly excels, because nothing of quality is ever achieved by taking the easy way in martial arts." Muten Roshi replied. He did not need to know who the Saibamen was to formulate his lesson into words.

"That's why you've called me up here…" Chayote muttered to herself. Of course, Roshi would not go on to attempt hardening Chayote even more – if Korin failed at that task, so would he. Training at this level would not grant Chayote any advantages and would possibly even lead to her current power degrading. Dropping slower than it would rot away if she sat around doing nothing but reducing nonetheless.

"That's right. Setting you straight is more important than any technique I can teach you." Muten Roshi nodded. "You must stop lying to yourself about why you're here on Earth and accept the person you truly are."

Chayote looked at her own hand. Her hand lit up like a lamp but she could form no Ki blasts in her hand. It was only when the battle was all she thought about and both her body and her mind were focused on winning without caring much for anything else that Ki blasts came out with some consistency.

A blonde woman approached the Saiyan and smacked her hand across the teen's shoulder with a confident smirk of a rascal. "Don't fret, I'll harden 'ya up tomorrow with some bullets! That's how the other two pipsqueaks used to train. You'll be doing crazy martial arts in no time!" she declared while showing off one of her Earthling handheld guns on the other hand. Chayote had taken much of the spitfire that came out from the barrel of that device and she failed to see how the equivalent of peas being flicked at her would harden her in any way.

Regardless the Saiyan smiled and nodded. Seeing such a positive reaction, the blonde walked away looking all proud and happy with herself. Chayote raised her thumb and pointed it at the blonde.

"Who the hell was this lady?" she inquired of everyone.

"That's just Launch-san. When she's in her blue hair form, she cooks and cleans for us. When she's blond, she just shoots at us. She switches between forms when she sneezes." Krillin sighed. For good reason, as Chayote put it together for herself. If the resident house sitter was stuck in her rampage form, that meant no dinner and the sky was slowly starting to turn red.

"Let's see what we can do about that…" Chayote cracked her knuckles and her neck. She then turned at Krillin and Yamcha. "After we eat, how about we go for a few more rounds until bedtime? I can't wait to take you two on again, I learn so much from every encounter."

Krillin and Yamcha looked at each other, baffled by the sudden shift of attitude from the Saiyan, before looking back at the teen and nodding.

"Launch, I'm gonna help you cook, where's the pepper!?" Chayote yelled out before entering the building.


	21. Scavenger Hunt

Chayote stared long and deep into the yet another failed attempt to perform the Kamehameha. One that split the oceans for a short while and then just darted off into the sky like a dropped firecracker. So much freedom and not a lick of an idea of what to do with it…

"Still no luck, huh?" Krillin sat down. The tiny warrior had band-aids stuck all over his head and one half of his face was still swollen. He looked far worse a few hours in his beating than he did shortly after but that was the case with beatings, it seemed.

"No. I played nice, just like the old man said." Chayote collapsed onto the sand and stared out into the distance. "Helped Launch turn back too. Granted, that was just because I was hungry but still…"

"I don't think you quite got it what Roshi-san meant." Krillin dragged his bottom closer to the rippling waves hitting the island shore. "Just flipping the switch won't do."

"Then how? How am I supposed to act?" Chayote looked at the brat who may have looked half her age despite being only a few years younger in actuality. And yet he had it all figured out. This martial arts gig really did stick to the Earthlings better than everyone else. Then again, it was kind of the signature craft of their planet after all, at least as far as Chayote knew the universe.

"You're not supposed to act like anything. You're just supposed to be honest. Think and behave as you feel like. Live your life to the fullest, that's what Kame Sennin Ryu is all about." Krillin pointed out.

"So what are we going to do tomorrow?" Chayote wondered. "Maybe the old-timer is actually going to teach us martial arts? That's what Korin told me to do, he said that this would be an essential martial arts training but the bag of bones isn't teaching us anything."

"He's not going to." Krillin shook his head. He looked up ahead at the horizon with nostalgia gleaming through his eyes even if what he was recalling didn't even occur that long ago. "Don't you still get it? Sharpening your body and mind, learning about the true meaning of martial arts is the entirety of the training."

"So I'm done then? You've already spoiled the twist for me." Chayote uttered to herself. One would have been foolish not to notice the hint of bitterness that approached the realms of disappointment in her voice.

"It's not that simple." Krillin stood up through moderate physical effort. The bruises over his body still ached and did their best to drag the young man down. "The training of a martial artist never ends. I completed Roshi-sama's training and so did Goku but the tournament showed us that there are always some areas we can still improve in."

"Is Bulma still inside?" Chayote wondered aloud.

"No, she left before dinner. She's pretty rich, you know, probably has servants to make fancy food for her…" Krillin leaned to Chayote and squinted at her as he gossiped. It was not his girly attempt at gossip that looked awkward, it was the fact that while leaning the pint-sized fighter barely measured up to Chayote's chest.

"I see… Where does she live?" the Saiyan wondered.

"Wait, are you leaving?" Krillin would have raised a curious eyebrow had his eye not been swollen too much for that feat to be possible.

"Naturally." Chayote nodded. "There's no use in me staying here any longer. I can realize what I truly feel anywhere on this planet but here. There's no use for you two to train with me too. With the vast difference between our power levels, it's just meaningless torture. Your results will grow vastly if you two train together, your power levels are not too different."

"So you're just going to leave Earth then? What was that about wanting to learn martial arts? Why did you even go out of your way to meet Goku and tell him about his upbringing then?" Krillin looked defensive. Could he have not wanted Chayote to leave? His voice trembled like his eyes were about to start watering. The Saiyan lingered on her following reply for a moment to see if they would but they did not.

"You said the core of the Kame Sennin Ryu is to live one's life to the fullest. The old geezer said that I'd only learn to properly control my Ki once I unify my body and my mind. I can't do that by just sitting on my butt. Nor can I figure it out by just thinking. Thinking's hard and it makes my head hurt. The only way I can know what I really want is to go for it and see how it feels while I'm doing it." Chayote replied. This seemed to calm Krillin down a little as he backed off and let go of Chayote's Turtle School Uniform.

"Alright then… Best of luck!" Krillin nodded his head. "Thanks for training with us." He followed it up with a bow.

A cascade of shots came from inside the house. Muten Roshi ran out from the house holding a massive, brown sea turtle. It did not take long for the rampaging shapeshifter to reveal herself wielding a submachine gun in her hands. Blond Launch took aim at Muten Roshi and his whiny sea turtle but then noticed Chayote with the corner of her eye.

"This damned bastard! You threw pepper into my face to make the other me cook and clean for you!" the blonde flipped out and unleashed a firestorm at the teen Saiyan who just flicked every single bullet away from her with a nonchalant face. This was perhaps the most training to her reflexes and speed that she had on this island but perhaps physical training or just blind rehearsal of martial art moves was not the training that Korin intended for Chayote at all.

That sly cat bastard. He truly did mean for Chayote to meet Muten Roshi only because he could have set her mind straight. Why couldn't the old mouser do that himself? Probably cause he's too damn lazy sitting on his ass, licking his paw and eating fish…

A gust of wind picked up in Chayote's wake as the Saiyan blitzed all the way to behind the raging woman, causing her wild, curly, blond hair to get all over Launch's face and tickle her nose. The Saiyan had always considered that cool warriors never looked at the sneezes, that way the wet and elegant sneeze was the most satisfactory noise of victory she's heard on this planet.

"Kinto!" Chayote called out, a space-blue cloud descended from the heavens with a stuttery whistle. The Saiyan prepared to leap onto her twisted version of a magical cloud and whizz away. It was only then that she recalled that Krillin did not actually tell her anything related to Bulma's whereabouts.

"Hey, so… About Bulma's address." Chayote turned to Krillin.

"You're leaving?" Muten Roshi interrupted their conversation.

"Yeah. I figured that training here would be pointless until I set my mind straight and finally having the option of leaving to space anytime would help to realize if it's what I truly want." Chayote turned at the old man. She had expected him to argue but he did not. He merely settled down and placed his arms behind his back.

"Bulma lives in West City, a massive yellow building named Capsule Corp. It's located in WST 3338926 K." The sea turtle that Muten Roshi used to carry out of harm's way replied.

"Oh my… What am I doing outside? We're all going to catch a cold this late in the evening…" Launch covered her mouth in horror. Now in her blue-haired, nice form.

"I should find it. Thanks, talking turtle!" Chayote leaped onto the Dark Kinto and gave the Kame House one last visual examination. There went yet another chapter of hers on Earth… And yet, it did not feel like it was closed yet despite her having claimed everything there was to claim from here. This home felt much more meaningful than just what there was to take from it, however. If Chayote was to get a handle on her thoughts and feelings, she'd still have to explore that in the future…

One thing at a time…

"Name's Sea Turtle!" the turtle corrected Chayote.

"Hey!" Krillin jumped up. "Don't leave like this! You're basically wearing underwear right now!" he yelled out.

"Oh! I can give you some of my clothes! Follow me!" Launch suggested with untold amounts of cheer in her voice. Chayote looked down at the Turtle School Uniform and shrugged. She was fine flying like this, even if it did feel sort of lacking in content and down below did pick up on breeze from time to time, namely, whenever there was a breeze to be picked up on.

Before one could state Capsule Corp's address out loud, Chayote leaped back onto the Dark Kinto, shoving Krillin off of it in a less than graceful manner. The boy had taken quite the liking to the Kinto he could actually ride.

"Wow, that's amazing, Roshi-san, I can actually ride this Kinto!" the plumpy cheered.

"If you ever climb to the Korin Tower and meet Master Korin, make sure to ask him for one." Muten Roshi nodded, looking a tad smug about his suggestion as if he had spoken to a child whom he suggested what to do once the child grew up.

"These are my sports clothes I jog in the morning with. Good luck, Chayote-san!" Launch waved at the Saiyan while Dark Kinto rose up to an altitude it could blast off from.

"W-Would that… By any chance mean… Launch-san is going to… Jog without the tracksuit and the shorts?" Muten Roshi puffed an imaginary chest with his hands.

Chayote blasted off before she could see what that suggestion ended up like. She kind of felt bad about taking this fine local athlete attire from Launch but it was not like Chayote did not leave her anything in return. A martial arts school uniform for a sports attire was a worthy trade in any book…

* * *

There was a lot of beauty to Earth. Unlike Planet Vegeta, Earth did not seem to have developed as a host of perpetual battlefields, pillar-shaped mountains with lush grass on top, mountains with waterfalls bursting from inside and rich jungles, brimming with different kind of life than just cultivated suicide bombers that spat acid from inside their heads sometimes. Chayote stared at a gang of little monkeys hopping from tree to tree with their tails while keeping their hands free to hold on to the food they had closely.

With an inwardly directed turn of her feet, the Saiyan escalated the Dark Kinto to fly faster until the sights of white, sky-reaching buildings, tinier domes with different colored rooftops and complicated monorail systems loomed in the horizon. From where Chayote was approaching the city, it did not look all too different from any world influenced by the Tuffle technology. Differences became apparent the closer Chayote got but overall she was blown back by the West City and how completely different it felt from any other place on Earth she's been to.

And to think that the first place she began experiencing Earth from was in was the Land of Korin…

Chayote kept moving onward and westward, cutting the city diagonally, thinking that, eventually, she'd run into the large building that's supposed to be in the center of the West City anyway. She may have navigated by the address given to her but that was too complicated. She'd have to do a whole bunch of reading and also to lower herself down to where she could check on the addresses of each building she passed. It felt far too troublesome compared to just whizzing to where she thought the center was and hoping for the best.

By the time Chayote reached West City, it was already morning. The last thing that the Saiyan wanted to do was to wake the inventor princess up and get her groggy. Still, she needed her spaceship so Chayote boldly walked into what may have ended up being a grave mistake for anyone who valued peace and quiet. A curly hair receptionist lady in a uniform fixed the tiny hat on her head and covered her face in a surprise of seeing such an unconventional guest in the Capsule Corp.

"You look like a soldier. Where's Bulma? Also, where can I get one of those uniforms?" Chayote approached the woman.

"Oh dear…" the woman shook her head. "Bulma-san is in school right now, she left thirty minutes ago. Shouldn't you be in school as well? You wouldn't happen to be some kind of delinquent, would you?"

"School? Is Bulma learning how to fight? It's a bit late for that, isn't it?" Chayote sighed, pressing her hands to her hips as she tapped her foot in frustration.

"Oh, dear no. Don't you know what a school is at your age? What a poor child…" the woman leaned in closer to Chayote as if trying to pat her on the shoulder, something about the Saiyan made the receptionist freeze and cease all comforting activity immediately. "Well, you asked about how to get my job earlier, you won't make it without a school degree, you know…"

"What a drag. I thought we had a deal, she was supposed to help me build my spaceship!" Chayote complained out loud. "These Earthlings, I swear… What an unreliable bunch all of them!"

"I… I don't even… Young lady, I will call security if you don't go to school this instance." The woman's voice trembled even if she was supposed to sound at least somewhat threatening.

"Security? Choosing to send your lackeys at me, smart. Anyway, if Bulma's not here, I don't think I have any use of this place. Is your security strong?" Chayote wondered, trying to decide if there was still any use out of this Capsule Corp that she could squeeze out.

"They've finished school and even professional school. They should handle a delinquent such as yourself." The receptionist looked more worried than confident in the supposed skill of the Capsule Corp security force.

"I'm back!" Bulma walked into Capsule Corp with her bag over her shoulders as if nothing happened.

"Finally…" Chayote pouted her lips. "I was just about to leave this boring place."

"Bulma-san! Don't tell me you've skipped school again!" the receptionist covered her cheeks in shock. "You wouldn't like growing up like this delinquent here, would you?"

"You think this place is bad, you should see school…" Bulma sighed. "Come on, let's go to the lab and see what we can cook up there… It's about the only reason for a seventeen-year-old gorgeous genius inventor to get out of bed in the morning."

Chayote did not really know or care about how to respond to that. She was neither that old nor did she know a thing about inventing things or school. For the sake of not having her ears yelled off, she just nodded and followed Bulma along.

The inventor's lab was just what Chayote thought she needed. Filled with examples of awesome tech, pretty much every remarkable invention of Earthlings that Chayote had seen was lying around halfway disassembled and already looking new and improved, even before it was finished. It also had a short old man that looked like a hobo, staring a massive television set, descending from the ceiling and observing a handful of women working out. They must not have been trained by a notable master as their skin was all covered up, making Chayote wonder if they even broke a sweat.

"Dad!" Bulma roared out. "We've got guests, turn your perverted garbage off!"

"Oh, Bulma!" Bulma's father looked back at his daughter and then back at the TV screen. The man in a doctor's coat kept switching between the two targets before realizing that something in this picture did not quite compute. What a slow man, even Chayote would have caught on by now. "Shouldn't you be in school?" he asked.

"I'm back already…" Bulma raised her nose up and looked away. "I'm going to work on some spacecraft to help Chayote here get home. She's an alien."

"Oh! Is that so?! I'm Doctor Brief!" the man raised his hand up, similarly to how Upa and Bora said hello whenever they saw Chayote after some time. It was child's play mirroring that social gesture. "So what's space like? Well… I guess it's the same in most parts but we've never left that far away, just to the Moon and back from time to time."

"Clearly it's loads of fun if Chayote wants to get back home! Now stop bugging us and turn off your erotic workout shows, please!" Bulma barked at her father. Chayote wondered how she could have been this rude to her own father. It was not like Saiyans even lived with their parents this long, or anything, but if Chayote ever spoke this way to her own old man, if she ever met him, he'd have backhanded her in a second. Then again… Taking on her old man would have been fun… Maybe that's what Bulma was trying to pull off here.

"Alright! This is the pathetic excuse we call a spaceship!" Bulma unrolled some dusty blueprint of something that looked almost like one of the Earthling arrows.

"Why is it shaped like that? Every spacecraft needs to be round for aerodynamics…" Chayote scratched the back of her head."

"What?! That doesn't even… Make sense!" Bulma dropped her jaw. Chayote took the marker off of the inventor's hand. She kept on scribbling and adding on details for mechanisms she did not know the exact purpose of that well but she knew exactly where they were, how they were meant to look and how they could have been fixed in an emergency scenario.

It was so strange, being able to draw something but seeing that only the person next to you who was incapable of drawing what you were scribbling understood what exactly you were drawing… Bulma kept on nodding the whole time, breaking into fits of laughter and exclaiming some weird sounds from time to time. Chayote had not even noticed when exactly did old man Brief turn away from his erotic show and join his daughter in marveling Chayote's best hand-drawn blueprint.

"I don't know…" Bulma closed one eye and began measuring and sizing up the finished blueprint. "It doesn't look quite like universe crossing stuff. There's a bunch of valuable improvements but…"

"I may have forgotten a thing or two since I left Planet Vegeta." Chayote shrugged. "Plus, I only know whatever any other grunt that's supposed to be able to fix the damned thing knows. If you want some blueprints for armor and weaponry, I could draw that with better accuracy. Saiyans have always cared much more about that stuff anyway."

"Couldn't you build it yourself?" Bulma raised an eyebrow, still looking a bit skeptical.

"No chance, the way we got this tech was by having Frieza Army land and toss it at us. The only look inside we got was when we smashed it and looked inside. Saiyans like to smash and break stuff so I've seen plenty of the Frieza Army tech from the inside." Chayote shrugged.

"This is garbage," Briefs declared. "My brilliant daughter was correct in her assessment, this is no universe traversing stuff, you'd only be able to travel to the end of our galaxy in about five years or so…"

Both Bulma and her father stared at one another with wide and blank stares. Then Bulma's stare grew increasingly pissed while her father just stared back the same at his daughter, cradling a lollipop in his mouth and rolling it about with his tongue. Bulma was about to explode in outrage but then she just smacked her own forehead and dragged her hand across her face.

"Oh!" Briefs raised his finger. "No, wait, those results are actually very good! We wouldn't come anywhere close that in a hundred years of advancement at our current rate…"

"One of the smartest men on the planet…" Bulma grumbled to herself. "Honestly… There's still a problem, though."

"Hmmm?" Chayote wondered.

"Most of this is full of materials that are very unlikely to be found on Earth. We would require some pretty kickass substitutes and they exist for sure but… They look like some A-Class military-grade stuff. Not something you'd buy in a convenience store." Bulma pointed out having calmed down after her father's vexing antics.

"Hmmm… I don't know where I could get my hands on military gear…" Chayote pondered. "Since I've kicked the Red Ribbon's ass, I wonder if Earth even has a military force worth its salt and the Red Ribbon base has been totaled so there's no chance salvaging anything from there."

Bulma stared at Chayote with an ironic squint, tapping her foot against the floor and her fingers against the table, waiting for the thick-skulled Saiyan to finally catch on.

"Wait, Son Goku's fighting the remainder of the Red Ribbons right now. Muten Roshi said there were some generals that have gone rogue and are wreaking havoc, hoping the Red Ribbon would eventually reform and take them back." Chayote finally realized what made Bulma this flippant. "It's too bad I don't have a way of finding Son Goku."

"That's not a problem at all." Bulma raised her index finger, looking all too proud of her own intellect. She reached out for a white gadget with a dark screen lying on the table and handed it to the Saiyan. "This is the Dragon Radar. You should be able to find Goku with this. He's looking for his grandpa's Dragon Ball, after all… It's a good thing I've made a spare, Goku's hogged my main one and I kind of still want those strawberries."

"Alright then, I'll bring you the military gear, build me my spaceship then." Chayote nodded. "It's been fun meeting you, Bulma's dad." The Saiyan waved for the aged man who nodded and turned back at the screen looking middle-aged women making their legs clip like scissors in front of the TV screen before switching to all fours and beginning to stretch out their bottoms.

With the morning barely having even kicked off, Chayote blasted off into the distance, following the yellow beeps on her radar in the distance in hopes of finding Son Goku. It seemed much easier to just collect the Dragon Balls and ask for all the technology she needed, honestly, but Son Goku was such a diva when it came to those things…


	22. The Multi-Colored Ribbon Brigade

"It would have been much easier knowing what I'm looking for…" Chayote whined out while staring at the blank Dragon Radar. Every time she pressed the only button on top, a noise alerted the Saiyan that the device was working but nothing of note happened. There was no visual indication suggesting that the device's display was even functional. Maybe it was busted?

It would be so much like Bulma to give Chayote out a broken model…

Then it occurred to the Saiyan that these Dragon Balls were supposedly scattered all throughout the planet. That meant that the radar, as amazing as it was, would not pick up on every single ball immediately. In fact, odds were, she'd be staring at a blank screen even if the device's display was working just fine. Seven Dragon Balls for the entire planet was quite a sparsity to have in mind.

Just for the sake of adventure, Chayote headed east. She was supposed to be in the West City, that meant that while West City was not the most west location, in fact, Chayote was sure that the Land of Korin was even farther west, it was west enough for her to pick the signal of at least a single Dragon Ball up if she traveled east long enough. Then again, it would have taken Dark Kinto a day or two to get around the planet in the current casual pace. Given how she was staring at the radar the whole time, Chayote did not feel all too brave about accelerating anymore.

East and east she went, hoping to find a bleep of at least a single Dragon Ball but Chayote reached the smoking wreckage of what seemed like a military base first. Led by both sheer curiosity as well as a swelling thought that the military base may have had some military-grade supplies to find and maybe even an actual soldier's uniform to borrow, Chayote landed to observe the ruin.

People laid sprawled out, their eyes rolled back and their weapons laying cold beside them. Smoke coiled from multiple buildings, the fire that had once damaged them had long since gone out. These were all Red Ribbon soldiers, of that there was no doubt. Chayote identified the ribbons around the soldiers' arms in a heartbeat but none of these mooks seemed important enough to wear a uniform or pack some serious heat. Not a single robot suit in sight…

There was a central building in the middle of the base. One that, instead of any brushed out Red Ribbon insignia and burnt Red Ribbon flags had a blue coat with an actual red ribbon dangling about freely. Chayote entered just to look around. Through the side window, the Saiyan noticed multiple gigantic dinosaurs getting bolder and bolder in claiming this undefended land.

"For a military base, this wreckage is awfully sparse…" Chayote spoke. Making a man behind her who stood with a rifle raised over his head, ready to boop her in the back of hers freeze in fear. "Your men, those that survived, fled. Earthlings make poor soldiers… No loyalty."

"Y-You're like him! T-The tail!" a rough, masculine voice made Chayote sigh and turn around to face the conscious survivor of Goku's rampage here.

"So the rumors were true, Earth is being invaded by aliens and the Red Ribbon got caught in the crossfire. I wonder if that's what Commander Red was gathering his forces for all along. Maybe he'd have used the Dragon Balls to repel you monsters away…" the broken, red-haired man looked down and away. He was too banged up to stand any hint of a chance against Chayote, even in his own, twisted and uninformed view of the world around him.

"Nope." Chayote shook her head. "The midget said he was gonna take over the world. It's kind of stupid when you think of it. Why bother with the Dragon Balls when the Earth is so puny, to begin with?"

"Don't you dare!" the man growled out, raising his right hand and putting all of his remaining strength into a single blow. Chayote appeared behind him just to see the fool fumble and nearly bust all of his remaining teeth out when he ate the mechanized panel after losing his balance and falling. "Commander Red was a brilliant man, the Red Ribbon Army was the mightiest military in the world and the Silver Army led by me, Commander Silver was going to carry out the mighty dream that it represented – complete conquest of Earth so that we could stand up against the alien threat that decimated the Red Ribbon."

"Conquer the Earth?" Chayote sneered at the man before switching her attention back at a computer panel and trying to mash some buttons. "I've only been on Earth for a few years and while one of the strongest defenders of this planet has one and only talent – he stinks real damn bad, you'd fail to even conquer him."

"You think it's over, don't you?" the self-proclaimed Commander Silver chuckled as he stood back up on his feet and stumbled across the room to a suitcase of capsules lying about on the processor. One of many that covered the entire central building.

"To be over something needs to begin. What's your password? I want to see if Son Goku may have taken one of your missing aircrafts to wherever the other Dragon Ball is." Chayote turned back at Silver only to see him with a capsule in hand. The man popped it and flicked it upward, unsealing a rocket launcher from it and aiming it at Chayote with a cocky smirk.

"You're right, a Dragon Ball was here, the brat took it, now die anyway!" Silver yelled out while firing a rocket indoors.

Once the smoke cleared, due to the rush of evening breeze rushing into the devastated building, only the bemused stare of unscathed Saiyan stared back at the injured Silver from the smoke. Vexed not by the discomfort that the primitive Earthling weaponry caused her but rather by the fact that the idiot commander just totaled all of the indoor computers by being a complete imbecile and nearly killing himself in the process. This one was too devoted to the cause and far too busted already for any information to still be beaten out of him.

"Yeah, I know I was right. That's how Son Goku was going to track all of you. By seeking out the splintered bases that have managed to find Dragon Balls." Chayote smacked her forehead.

"Damn aliens… How did you find us, to begin with?" Silver grunted.

Chayote pulled out her Dragon Radar and showed it to Silver. She even went as far as to press the topmost button and let that useless sound come out again, just to make the broken commander know that the device worked.

"A Dragon Radar!? More precise than the Red Ribbon's own!?" Silver exclaimed in disbelief.

"It's kind of useless junk, really." Chayote threw the thing at the commander in a wide arc, at least she still got the amusement from checking the man fumble about and do his best to preserve the radar and pull it out of mid-fall. The man clutched and pressed it against his chest as if it held some sort of priceless treasure.

"Do you have any idea…?" Silver mumbled as if he was delirious and subjected to a boiling fever. "The precarious situation of all our forces after the demise of the HQ? Silver Ribbon Army, Blue Ribbon Army, White Ribbon Army… All of us followed on the leads left to us by the base, determined to make it work, accelerating our plans because there were to be no more orders… Those of us that found the Dragon Balls had no more chance of finding any more – the base, the radar, all of it totaled by some extraterrestrial maniac!"

"Actually, it was the redhead midget that nuked the base." Chayote shrugged, indifferent to Silver's delirium. "So are you going to tell me where Son Goku went or do I need to take this useless chunk of metal off of you?"

"It's not useless at all!" Silver hissed back at Chayote, extending his hand out and pressing the button a few more times. "The button does not just turn the device on, it also zooms out. Press it a pair of times and you'll get the signal. There you go…"

What Silver was referring to a flashing beep of what was likely a Dragon Ball far off north. There was another one to the south and a handful more clumped together and heading north – that had to be Son Goku.

"Man… You've been pretty helpful. Now I kinda don't wanna kill you anymore." Chayote complained as if it was a problem. "You wouldn't happen to want to lend me that cool coat hanging on top of this building and some of the clothes your soldiers wear?"

"W-Why would you…? Whatever… Take whatever you want. This day the Silver Ribbon Army knew defeat, just like its predecessor but I will grow stronger and take revenge!" Silver proclaimed with a raised fist. Now Chayote was kind of beginning to like this guy. Now she definitely couldn't kill him! What if he proved to turn into an entertaining challenge at some point in the future?

Donning the blue coat of Commander Silver of the Silver Ribbon Army as well as one of the hats that Chayote found lying about on the dirt, the Saiyan blasted off atop of Dark Kinto to the north, in an aim to follow and catch up to Son Goku. The Saiyan felt curious as to how much the kid had grown since her beatdown in the tournament. He was definitely prime for a Zenkai boost, even if he did leave without fully recovering from his injuries, then again, weaklings like the Silver Ribbon Army would not have challenged even recovering Goku at all.

* * *

Earth's northern side took Chayote by surprise. The relentless howls of the wind, the drab smacks of snow coming at the Saiyan in sizes to be compared to an actual snow-fight and the frigidness of the place. It was almost unwelcome enough to be considered a valid training spot. One thing was for certain – Chayote could not stop thanking herself for making the decision to take Commander Silver's coat. It was nowhere near enough but it was something to help her stay on the "icicles hanging from my nose" level instead of "frozen to popsicle in an instant" she'd be doomed for under normal circumstances.

One thing that came through experimentation was the discovery that the closer to the ground Chayote had gone, the more manageable were the snowstorms. That explained the tiny, round houses of colored clay, covered with snow. There was only one way that the puny Earthlings could survive these conditions – by hunkering themselves down in some safe pocket of the constant blizzard.

No matter how deep into the showering snow Chayote had gone, the beep of the Dragon Balls continued even further to the north. The Saiyan had to adjust the zooming of the radar a pair of times as she was coming closer but since she kept on messing with the zoom, it seemed like a fruitless work, even if she knew why the radar showed almost no progress whatsoever being made.

The girl Saiyan did not mind getting a closer look at the village around the area where the Dragon Ball was. By one point she had closed in to the bundle of Dragon Balls close enough that the Dragon Radar seemed useless. It could sort of point her at a more precise direction but the best that it could tell her was "it's around here somewhere, start looking around, idiot".

A scream broke through to Chayote. The Saiyan looked back at a small house in the village, somewhere in the general direction where the scream came from. It was no longer a secret that the Red Ribbon employed female soldiers and some of them were quite high-ranking. Maybe Goku was in the process of busting up another encampment.

"These villagers are working with that kid that knocked us out!" a Red Ribbon soldier in a white, winter coat declared while pointing his gun at a quivering woman and her daughter who cowered behind her mother's lap. Oddly enough, all of the soldiers in the group appeared to be rising from the floor position, implying they've been lying down before picking this fight with the villagers.

"Shoulda finished us off when ya had the chance! Now where did the brat go!?" another guard grumbled, shoving a gun up in the woman's face, making the father of the family rather upset, even if his face was all shriveled in fear as he stepped up to the soldiers, trying to shove their guns away from his family but only ending up standing in their paths himself.

"He went to the tower, we need to warn Commander White!" the first guard objected while placing his hand on the shoulder of his trigger happy and as of recently beaten to a pulp comrade.

"Not before we show these hillbillies what happens when you go against the White Ribbon Army!" the second guard raged as he pulled the trigger. A thunderous barrage of gunfire rumbles left the barrel and alerted the entire village. The walls of the house of the family of this brave man, his wife, and the little, red-haired girl will never be the same again as they had smoking holes riddling them to the eastern wing of the home.

Judging from the dropped jaws and blasting out eyes of shock, the walls were not what the soldiers were aiming at. These things tend to happen when a hi-speed Saiyan warrior intercepts one's attempt to mow down a local family that possibly had information that she needed and pushed the weapons away after the trigger was pulled but not before the bullet left the barrel.

"It's another freaky brat!" the soldiers whimpered.

"I know you guys are in some hard-earned conquering and pillaging but I need some information this family might have. I'd question you guys but none of you Red Ribbon, or whatever, folks seem too cooperative." Chayote explained with a cold face that sent the soldiers running for their lives. They've just been knocked out by one dark-haired kid with a tail and they needed none of it from a bit older version of that same kid with a much more developed killer stare.

"Y-You're a friend of Goku's?" the little girl appeared from behind her mother's lap and approached Chayote, showing some guts at last. Then again, a weakling like Earthlings that weren't engaged in martial arts training likely got frightened by the puny local weaponry so there was nothing to be ashamed of if the brat did feel her legs get a bit shaky.

"You know Son Goku? Man, it's so great I bothered to save you guys. Do you know where he went?" Chayote smiled. She had never expected a moment of weak judgment that defied everything she was taught by the example of the Saiyans she grew up around to result in a useful outcome. Sometimes it felt like there was some punishment-reward system for how one acted but Chayote still felt like had not mastered it. All that moral judgment stuff was better left off for Upa and Bora…

"Yes, my name is Suno and…" the girl began jumping at Chayote in glee and try to grab the girl's hand and drag her into the house but the Saiyan pulled her hand out of the little brat's clutches and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah… Where's Son Goku?" Chayote grumped out.

"He… He left for the tower. The Muscle Tower…" Suno's mother pointed at the looming and bothersome rocky pillar in the distance that covered up the fleeting Sun in the distance but had narrow streaks of light striped around it, which was the only source of lighting in the evening.

"He's a foolish boy, nobody returns from the Muscle Tower but my wife said he would not listen." Suno's father rubbed the back of his head.

"Hmph. Son Goku is not like your weakling military. He's likely already done with the tower, if he's not messing around, that is. He better not totals this entire tower. I still need to check it for military grade gear Bulma can use for my spaceship." Chayote pouted her lips while sizing up the tower in the distance.

"I can make you some tea…" Suno's mother suggested, "We have some soup left over, it's not much but we must thank you for saving our lives. Perhaps it was a tad reckless to leave these soldiers Goku-san knocked out just lying around here..."

"I've no time to waste here. I need to make sure the tower doesn't have any robots I can bust and bring to Bulma for scrap parts. That's why I'm here, in the first place." Chayote shrugged before beginning to shuffle toward the tower. The speed in her step picked up bit by bit, every passing step before transitioning into a full-on dash where the Saiyan no longer even touched the ground, just launched waves of snow to the sides as she dashed forward.

The next time her feet touched the ground was when Chayote took it into the air and, after performing a couple of gentle flips and acrobatic tricks in the air, the Saiyan waited until she got as close to the tower as she could before reaching out with her hand and focusing her energy in it. As expected, she did not form a complete Ki blast but it was close enough for a good rumble that sent the bricks of the tower fumbling down and left a gaping hole for Chayote to enter the Muscle Tower through.

"Ah! Chayote!" Goku opened his yapper as his tail began waggling with excitement.

Chayote's eyes scanned through the place, focusing on a smoldering pile of rubble beside Son Goku resting nearby what seemed to be like a throne built out of boring, blue iron. Figured that the moment Chayote found Son Goku, he'd be standing atop of a destroyed robot that was useless in his current state.

"Is that a Metallitron?" Chayote asked with bemusement.

"I dunno… He was stopping me from getting to the top floor and rescuing the village chief. Say… You're pretty strong, could you just jump up and punch through the top floor like you busted in here?" Goku pointed at the ceiling. "I'd really love to fight every guy on this tower one by one but it would be a lot more fun if I knew the chief was okay."

"Don't be ridiculous." Chayote crossed her arms. "I'm here for parts of a robot that you, apparently, have just destroyed. I can't help it… I'll have to follow you around until you can repay the robot parts you owe me for my spaceship."

"Wha!? What do you mean owe you!?" Goku clutched his fist. "I never borrowed anything from you! What do you need a spaceship for anyway? Weren't you supposed to be training with old-timer?"

"That was useless, we're going home." Chayote shook her head.

"No way!" Goku took a fighting stance, reacting with a tad more vitriol to the news that Chayote had decided for him than the Saiyan initially thought. What kind of a Saiyan would not want to return to Planet Vegeta and serve the Frieza Army? Likely one that hit his head as a baby…

"Ughmmm…" somebody cleared their throat on the speaker. "In case you two want to fight it out, mind doing it outside my tower?"

"Who's that?" Chayote pointed at the speaker.

"That's some Commander White guy. He has the village chief. I need to get the chief back!" Goku declared.

Chayote extended her hand, a small Ki blast left her hand and blew a hole through the wall, letting a howling gust of the blizzard into the building and making Goku quiver in cold. "What did you do t-that for?" he whined out. "I left the c-coat S-Suno gave me d-down below…"

"Commander White. I have destroyed him." Chayote declared pointing at the smoking wreckage of the ceiling on which a megaphone speaker no longer hung.

"I don't think that's Commander White, he's just using it to speak." Goku shivered before beginning to dash towards the stairs to the next floor.

"Tsk. Should have said so… Fine, I'll follow you and see if there are more robots I can disassemble for parts here. If the headquarters I've destroyed are any indicator, they'll have a dozen of these Metallitrons lying around." Chayote nodded to herself and followed Goku to the next floor.


	23. Murasaki: Hurricane Chronicles

"Whoa! Look at this place, it's like outside but… Inside!" Goku marveled at the green garden with little creeks and bridges. Further in the distance Chayote could make out a little wooden house unlike any she's seen lately. The last time she'd seen something like that was before the tournament, while she was traveling the countryside.

"Wait a second… This doesn't make any sense at all!" Chayote got worked up over something she should have for all intents and purposes not minded whatsoever. "The tower didn't look nearly large enough from the outside to fit something like this inside…"

The lights went out in an instant, catching Chayote and Goku by surprise. With the artificial lighting seeping into their eyes, the total disappearance of lighting made adapting in the new environment a bit of a woozy. A loud yell echoed in the darkness, Chayote moved her glance to her backside, where she felt a light pinch and heard the insufferable rustling of the fake grass. The lights went up again, revealing a writhing in pain purple ninja on the floor, his eyes were wet with tears while his expressive face twisted to exquisite proportions in his current, pained state.

"Wh-What the hell are you made of?!" he shrieked while rolling around on the floor. Once the man realized that he was making a fool of himself, he rolled backward and stood back on his feet, revealing a rather short stature for a fully grown man. No matter how hard the master of this floor tried to look tough and brush off his fiasco, he still had glistening wet crystals of tears drying out at the corners of his eyes.

"Why did you turn the lights back on?" the lips of the purple man extended to hilarious lengths but it did not appear to be due to any supernatural ability. It just looked like the soldier guarding this floor had one of those kinds of faces. The man spoke to some black gadget in his hand, likely something like a communicator like the ones built into a scouter. It didn't look like the Earthlings managed to integrate multiple gadgets into a single device just yet.

"What are you talking about?! I thought you were supposed to be guarding your floor in total darkness, utilize the shadowy embrace of the oblivion to take out your enemies in the cover of darkness!" a growling voice came out from the other end of the gadget.

"Look, I was a bit late to return to my post, the plan was going great until you turned on the light!" the purple man kept on yelling at his communicator.

"Great!? You tripped and fell over the girl. You can't even take a damsel in distress hostage, you incompetent nincompoop, to think you're my most deadly assassin shows how desperate the White Ribbon Army truly is!" the man on the other end replied.

"Say, say… Are you gonna fight us or not?" Goku wondered. "The guy on the other floor looked pretty strong but he couldn't take any of my punches at all. I might have overdone it with a Kamehameha…"

"Showoff, you're only this strong because I helped you." Chayote sneered at her tiny companion.

"Really?" Goku wondered, looking at his hands. He must have noticed the massive increase in his own strength the moment that he recovered from the injuries sustained during the World Martial Arts Tournament. "Now that you mention it, I really do feel like on a whole different world from before…"

"Yeah, I've fought those Metallitrons while raiding the headquarters and trust me, you'd have had your hands full with one." Chayote shrugged.

"W-Wait! You destroyed the Red Ribbon Army's headquarters?!" the purple man freaked out, shifting about the muscles of his face and bulging out his eyes in shock. The rather serene garden began reeking of the sweat that the assassin put out.

"Why does everyone keep saying that? The red midget did that himself. I just beat the army." Chayote sighed. "Then again, I suppose I was going to do it anyway…"

"Oh… Ow ow ow ow ow ow!" the purple man began writhing on the floor while his previously overwhelmed with shock face turned to a pain-ridden expression at the snap of the fingers. "Commander White, I have suddenly been taken down by the vapors! I've caught some sort of disease, must be the fish! My tummy just hurts!"

"Murasaki, you damn coward! Stand up and fight them like a true ninja!" the man to whom Murasaki referred to as Commander White ordered through the communication link.

"I guess he's not gonna fight…" Goku sighed in disappointment. "Let's go up, the top floor can't be that far away."

"Whatever, I wasn't going to fight this dweeb anyway. He doesn't look like a robot, I will only destroy a robot for its parts and then I'm out of here." Chayote shrugged and was about to turn to follow Goku but then Murasaki leaped back up to his feet.

"Ha ha ha ha! You have fallen for my trap, you imbeciles! I see that this is the first time any of you meet a real ninja in battle. Judging from how my Commander spoke to me, he sees me in action for the first time as well. I can't say I blame him, for I have taken out every one of my foes concealed, from the shadows. What we have here is a unique opportunity for me to stretch my legs out and show two grasshoppers what's what!" Murasaki laughed out with a buffed out chest while brandishing a pair of kunai knives.

"Oh, so you are going to fight!?" Goku turned back and leaned forward, his hands clutched by his sides in excitement while his tail waggled about like a wild whip.

"I've never met a ninja before. Fine, I'll watch Son Goku beat the crap out of you and see what of your martial arts can be adapted into my fighting style." Chayote turned around with a smirk.

"Very well, prepare to have your senses overwhelmed and to doubt your own mind!" Murasaki exclaimed while lifting his hand up in the air. Goku took up a fighting stance in response to Murasaki's sudden motion. "My ninjutsu will lull you and be your end at the same time, brats."

Murasaki swiped his hand to the floor, making smoke burst from underneath, completely shrouding his presence. Something suggested to Chayote that had she managed to learn to sense Ki like Korin claimed to be able to, she'd have picked Murasaki's signature up like nobody's business. The ninja disappeared from the cloud of smoke, dashing to the trees. His movements looked sloppy enough for Chayote to notice he was moving and where to but the sharp sting at her eyes from the smoke prevented her from following the ninja as effortlessly as she should have been able to.

"What now!? Behold, the Art of Invisibility!" Murasaki's voice came from up above, just about where Chayote had lost his movements because her own eyes were getting watery.

"What a useless technique. What good is hiding? Every Saiyan I knew as a kid could hide when we played hide-and-seek." The teenage Saiyan sighed in frustration of her time being wasted.

"There!" Goku picked up a stone and chugged it straight into Murasaki's forehead. The ninja fell out of the tree with his eyes whited out and fuzz coming out from his mouth. His landing did not do his unconscious state any favors. This mockery of a battle was over.

"Oh… I think I overdid it…" Goku smiled while brushing the back of his head with a smile that gleamed of innocence. "I'm still getting used to the power-up," he snickered.

"Whatever, let's just go already…" Chayote hurried her tiny companion to leave this pointless and nonsensical garden behind them.

"Murasaki! Master-Sergeant Murasaki! Murasaki!" Commander White's voice beamed from the communicator gadget. "This is getting out of hand, activate Artificial Human No. 8 immediately! Do you hear me!?"

Chayote froze in her place as if a destructive Ki wave that had freezing properties hit her in the back that instant. She turned toward the communicator and ran up to it, picking it up from the ground and raising it to her face just like she saw Murasaki do before.

"What did you say? About the Artificial Human, are you saying there are robots on this floor?" Chayote demanded to know.

"Huh? What are you… I mean… Why yes…" Commander White faked a sincere and well-intending laughter. "There is, just find a remote control on Master-Sergeant Murasaki and you should be able to activate Artificial Human No. 8."

"Say, say, what's Artificial Human?" Goku climbed up Chayote's shoulders to peek at the communication gadget in her hands as if he could not have just peeked from the side. The fact that the communicator was not a television set eluded the pint-sized Saiyan as he tried to catch a glimpse of something interesting in the functioning of the purely auditory device.

"It is a different way of saying Robot." Chayote surmised. "Think about it, what did Metallitron look like? A fake human. That means that there are more like him. You'll teach me how to do it, you hear me?"

"Sure…" Commander White replied with uncertainty. "There's only one button on the remote, even an absolute idiot could operate it."

Chayote let her hand burrow underneath the purple gi of the unconscious Master-Sergeant and withdrew a single steel remote of hilarious proportions. Just like Commander White said, it had a single, red button in the middle and seemed to be designed to be operated by an imbecile. Chayote had some questions though…

"This panel has only one button. If it activates the Artificial Human, how does one de-activate it?" the Saiyan wondered after approaching the lying communicator gadget.

"Y-You… You just press it again…" Commander White mumbled, baffled by the fact that he had to explain something this simple.

"Say, if you just need the parts, why do you need to activate that robot at all?" Goku wondered, bringing up a fair point.

"If he's active, it will save me the trouble of looking for it…" Chayote grinned. "Plus, a Saiyan relishes in the opportunity to fight. If there's even a possibility that the Artificial Human will give me a fun fight, however slim, I'll take that bet."

The teenage Saiyan pressed the button with both of her thumbs even though there was no need for two whole limbs to be employed. Both Saiyans watched the remote as if it was supposed to give off some sort of signal about its function being performed. After a few moments, Chayote caught her sight wandering and then a single, boisterous clang demanded her full attention.

The being was on the second floor, a massive and thick looking fellow, bit of a blockhead, not too much different from the Metallitrons but compared to those guys it seemed a bit like a step-down, at least in terms of the appearance. He was muscular and giant but… Quite plain too. He also looked a bit patched together, what with the sewing lines covering his forehead and his hair shaved on the lower parts where his head was operated on.

"Whoa!" Goku lost his cool, taking a step back and letting his jaw drop. He acted out of the defensive instinct when he entered a fighting stance and prepared to attack the giant.

"Hmm…" the Artificial Human rumbled before reaching out for his head and then twisting and bending his neck around so hard that his body let out a chilling, metallic crack. "Thank you for releasing me. I am Artificial Human No. 8."

"Huh?" Goku broke his stance. "He seems nice…"

Leave it to him to form first impressions about people in a snap. It was not like Chayote trusted Goku's impressions all that much, he did keep telling everybody she was nice when in truth she was just a warrior trapped on a desolate planet, wishing to grow strong enough so that her corps approve of her and let her join. While there was nothing wrong with any of that in Chayote's handbook, it was not what Earthlings typically referred to as "nice".

"Don't get too attached. I am busting it." Chayote handed the remote to Goku while walking out and slowly approaching the confused giant. She needed to work through a whole floor of metal steps to get to the imprisonment cells where the giant was held before his awakening.

"H-Huh? Please… I do not wish to fight you." Artificial Human No. 8 shook his hands out in front of himself.

"Oh? This pissing your pants look doesn't suit a big fellow like you…" Chayote grinned, leaning her head to the side like a delinquent in an attempt to lure out an attempt at a cheap shot from her opponent, one that would have justified a full-force retaliation.

"It's not that. I don't like fighting, at all!" Artificial Human No. 8 clapped his hands and fell to his knees, the scary looking brute shook his head and pleaded like a little sissy. Seeing him beg for his life like that… It made something about this feel… Wrong.

"Shut up and die!" Chayote roared out and lunged forward. Something was wrong, she knew that the whole time. A sharp and blunt force bashing at her side from the left knocked her off her intended goal rightfully with how sloppy her movements were. It felt like her own body was conflicted with its very actions.

"Stop! He doesn't want to fight you." Goku yelled out. It appeared that the brat had some Saiyan blood in him, it took some Saiyan guts to attack one's own kind and attack them regardless of the knowledge of just how much stronger they were.

"I hear a whole lot of his problems and not all that many of mine…" Chayote expressed while leaving back through the hole she just busted through, one leading into another storage room that was walled off by multiple layers of solid titanium. Titanium that peeled apart like paper when two Saiyans danced with each other.

"W-Why are you doing this?" Artificial Human No. 8 cried out. Chayote turned to him in bemusement, actual tears were bursting like a gazer stream down from his eyes. Why would a legitimate military organization install this watering mechanism into their lethal weapon? Then again, there may not have been that much legitimacy on an interplanetary scale to the Red Ribbons or any of their daughter armies.

"It's simple. I need your body parts to return home." Chayote explained.

"There has to be another way, the White Ribbons must have more robots, ones that are actually bad guys!" Goku insisted before redirecting his attention elsewhere. His nose twitched again and again. The boy raised his arms up to block a barrage of knives plunged his way. Chayote kicked up a plate of titanium she had busted down and let the knives bounce off of it. She had to hand it to Goku, while his ability to react to attack was still green, his instincts were second to none. His nose seemed almost uncanny in its ability to tell all sorts of useful things.

"You thought you have seen the last of Master-Sergeant Murasaki, did you!?" another Murasaki chuckled with his arms crossed over his chest.

A thundering sound of Earthling gunfire made Chayote's eyes turn to the north-eastern wing of the floor, she did not bother to react to the gunfire as it left not even a single graze on her. It was the fact that another duplicate of Murasaki attacked her with the said gun that piqued her interest much more.

"Go on, Artificial Human No. 8, eliminate them!" yet another duplicate of Murasaki demanded, this time, one stuck to the roof. This one had sandals that were black and not the wooden ones shared by the other duplicates or the unconscious original Murasaki.

"I will not, I don't like fighting!" Artificial Human No. 8 shook his head and insisted through the tears running down his face.

"Then you will die with them!" yet another Murasaki leaped out from one of the containment cells, kicking the barred door open and throwing a pair of kusarigama at Artificial Human No. 8.

"You bastards…" Goku grunted, wiping off the kunai blades that penetrated his arms if only skin-deep. "Stop picking on Eighter!"

"Eighter?" Artificial Human No. 8 looked at Goku with surprise.

"Yeah… Artificial Human No. 8 is a mouthful…" Goku chuckled while showing "Eighter. Yo, I'm Goku, nice to meet you!" the peace sign.

"Dammit, you went ahead and named him, didn't you?" Chayote sighed.

"Face the terror of master ninja assassins, the Murasaki Shadow Clone Technique!" the Murasaki dupes declared in perfect synchrony as they took flight over Goku's head and began dropping little marbles from inside their gi. It only made sense they'd attack Goku, he did take out their master.

Chayote looked at the unconscious Murasaki and wondered how it could have been possible that with the user of the technique completely unconscious the technique still continued without their say. She had never seen any techniques of this sort, perhaps there was still some merit to this ninjutsu martial art?

The tiny marbles exploded into clouds of gas, not too much different from the Kinto clouds except appearing much heavier and more expansive. Goku, being the gullible idiot that he was, fell right for it. It only made sense with his silly experience every technique firsthand, face-first fighting style that he'd breathe a whole bunch of it in. What impressed Chayote much more was that the Murasaki Shadow Clones could create solid gas out of their Ki. It was an ability she had never before seen a martial artist use.

"Don't just stand there…" Eighter pleaded. "Please, help your friend! He was so nice to me…"

"Ha ha ha ha, nerve-paralyzing gas, deadly poison and sleeping gas all working wonders in a perfect, harmonious cocktail! Master-Sergeant Murasaki has never missed a mark and now you will know why, child!" the Murasaki Shadow Clones all showed off to Goku, posing on the railing as the tiny Saiyan choked on his own gullible nature inside the deadly mixture of gas bombs.

Chayote extended her hand. A Ki blast fired off in a full, destructive beam form and disintegrated one of the cocky ninja bastards. The Saiyan grinned, her Ki blasts did not work consistently although this one worked like a charm. She wasn't even trying to achieve her goal with that, her mind and body must have just been truly onboard with saving Goku's life.

"Aka!" one of the Murasaki Shadow Clones yelled out.

A blue, orange and black blur distracted the Murasaki Clones from contemplating the demise of their kin. It was so very unlike artificial constructs of Ki to grieve their own. Chayote, standing atop of the railing placed Goku on the ground and turned around to give the remaining triplets her death stare.

"You losers aren't clones at all. You're all different people, aren't you?" the Saiyan inquired.

"Y-You monster! Murasaki Brothers, disperse!" one of the Murasaki bunch declared but Eighter in an impressive feat of speed, intercepted every single one of the brothers, taking them out with backhanded smacks that all hit the belfry.

"All of you hurt Goku! I won't forgive you! You're not getting away!" Eighter raged, his eyes glowing with cold yet intense light while the large, box-shaped head of the artificial brute twisted with fury.

"See?" Goku chuckled, half asleep and paralyzed. "Eighter's okay. Don't kill him."

"Please!" Artificial Human No. 8 bowed with his hands clapped together.

"Tsk. Whatever… As if I'm gonna have my spaceship built out of such a sissy." Chayote crossed her arms over her chest, looking away with a blush on her cheeks. She had learned a valuable lesson in this tower. One that testified that she was wise to listen to the signs her body gave her, conflicting with her own judgment only made her weak enough for Goku to tag her while working alongside her body and subconscious mind made her Ki blasts work for once. Not just work… Excel.

"Let's just get to the next floor. Hopefully Commander White's got himself another Battle Jacket…" Chayote grumbled. Just because she decided not to take shortcuts in her path to space exploration, it didn't mean that she had to act like her more primitive and external self loved that decision. The Saiyan caught the glimpse of the scattered, unconscious bodies of the Murasaki Brothers, whited out just like their predecessor but... Killing them now seemed pointless. They were evil but they were also weak and, currently, powerless.

Earth was rubbing off on her. She needed to get those parts sooner rather than later...


	24. Brick Tower Down!

"Artificial Human No. 8!" the voice of Commander White roared through the megaphones leading up to the top floor of the Muscle Tower. "You're betraying your objective, kill those brats now, that's an order!"

Chayote sighed. There was little point in taking these threats seriously. No. 8 looked like he could have caused some damage but even if he was a dozen times the fighter that those Metallitrons were, he'd have still failed in taking her down. That must have been why Lord Frieza resigned to using living soldiers over robots. Even if they disobeyed on an occasion and had to be terminated, at least they were good at their jobs, as long as the job was destroying something or beating someone up.

"I will not." Artificial Human No. 8 shook his head, looking and talking to a megaphone as if it somehow could have heard him. "I hate violence."

"Dammit, you traitor!" White yelled into the megaphone, making the voice transmission device shake from tension and forcing Chayote and Goku to stick fingers into their ears in an attempt to relieve some of the irritation from White's excessive yelling. "I'll kill you in that case!"

"Shut up!" Goku finally lost his composure by yelling at the megaphone as if he was speaking to White's face. "We're climbing up the tower and we're rescuing the village chief! If you give him back now, we won't have to pummel you flat!"

"I'd rather prefer pummeling him flat." Chayote shook her head. Although, in the beginning, she was mostly indifferent towards the fate of this tower and its petty commander, all of this annoying yelling had ticked her off enough for her to see red. Besides, even if Upa was not here to set things straight, she was 47 percent sure that Commander White was evil and that it was okay to kill him.

"That's mean!" Eighter leaned back.

"You stupid tin can!" Commander White yelled out, "At least those brats have the guts to do what they think is right. It's fortunate that I can still fix all of my problems at once…"

"What do you mean by that?" Goku stopped from ascending the tower and looked at the nearest megaphone.

"I'll have to ask you lot to go back to Master Sergeant Murasaki's floor. There is a remote control in Murasaki's pocket that I want you to pick up and bring to me." Commander White issued an order.

"If we give you the remote, will you let go the village chief?" Artificial Human No. 8 stopped as well. Of course, the oversized automaton would leap at the first chance to chicken out.

"No, but if you don't, I'll shoot him in the face right now!" Commander White growled. His voice sounded strained enough for him to mean it. He was serious, more likely than not, he was a king cornered in his throne room and therefore had his entire kingdom positioned atop of a shaky card tower.

Goku and Artificial Human No. 8 leaned back in shock. Judging from their reaction, what Commander White said was pretty evil, even though it seemed like the rational play to Chayote. The man was more likely than not a weakling, similar to Commander Red, someone who had underlings do all his job for him, except he only had one Metallitron and his best assassin was light-years from Taopaipai. The village chief was his only ace so he was wise to play it.

"What's the remote for?" Chayote wondered.

"Oh, now you're interested?" Commander White calmed down and began sounding manipulative rather than desperate. "It's the same remote that activated that redundant failure of a robot, I'm going to detonate the self-destruction mechanism in his body. It is the most powerful explosive in the White Ribbon Army's control, the entire area might be destroyed but I'd happily eliminate the threat to Blue Ribbon. Years from now, Red Ribbon will rise again and the Dragon Balls will once again be in our sights!"

"The Dragon Balls?" Eighter wondered.

"Collect all seven, magical dragon fulfills your wish." Chayote got him up to speed for no particular reason other than not having to hear about it from him again.

"I dread the thought of what horrible people like the White Ribbon would do with such a thing…" Artificial Human No. 8 poked two of his index fingers together in sadness.

"Fine, I'll bring you the remote." Chayote shrugged. "Be right back…"

Before Goku could object, the Saiyan disappeared from his sights. She dashed back into the indoor garden and began scouring the place with her best attempt at a visual inspection. Everything around her looked like just a mess of unconscious bodies and scattered weaponry. She couldn't even begin to recall where she had put the remote after activating Eighter.

"Huh… I could swear I handed it off to Goku before approaching No. 8. When he interrupted me, he no longer had it in his hands. Must have dropped it somewhere…" Chayote scratched her head. She could have moved at untraceable by human eye speeds but none of it mattered if she did not know where to begin looking. Once she got her mind in order, her speed would assist in looking for sure but…

"I guess I'll have to scan it all the old fashioned way…" Chayote sighed. The Saiyan dashed about in a blue blur, looking at areas where Goku stood when she handed him the remote, then just all around the grassy areas. She dived underwater inside those little ponds, looked inside the hollow stones that she took for actual boulders. The only place she hadn't looked for was the little house in the western part of the floor.

* * *

"What are the two of you doing here!?" Commander White growled through his teeth as he pressed the village chief tighter to his body and almost drilled the barrel of his gun into the poor man's head. "I thought I told you to bring me the remote!"

"Chayote's gonna bring it, just let the village chief go," Goku growled while his spiky hair went wild, like the hair of a very temperamental feline. Even the hairs on his tail spiked up, making it stiffer in its movements, almost like a solid stick swung left to right instead of its usual, effortless flow.

"Surely you cannot be this mean! There must be kindness in your heart to let this poor man go." Eighter pleaded to Commander White's reason.

"Nice try, I'd shoot you right in between the eyes for refusing to kill these interlopers and then bringing them here, all the way through the maze and the hidden floor!" Commander White ground his teeth. Somehow he had restrained the more primitive instincts to point the gun at Eighter and unload a pair of caps. Even if the handgun would have barely even registered to the Artificial Human, the fact of firing at him looked like it would have caused White some intense relief.

"Better yet, let village chief go and let's fight it out!" Goku almost demanded it.

"Tsk, tough luck, kid, so that you could beat me and then wreck all that I've built. Like you've wrecked the Silver Ribbon? They had the necessary gear to mine the mountains and some serious aerial combat vehicles, even if he was not a part of White Ribbon, Silver was a beneficial partner!" White smirked for he realized he was the player who found himself attempted to be played.

"What do you mean you won't fight me!?" Goku stepped back, while his face never changed from its sourness, the Saiyan looked somewhat taken aback by the fact that his problems were not about to be solved with such a simple way of settling their problems. The boy clutched his knuckles, his teeth protruded like the fangs of a wild simian who was about to pounce at his target and bash their brains in with their bare hammer-arm strikes.

"Don't, Goku… The chief…" Eighter pleaded.

"Heh, you're pretty fast, kid… Whattaya say, wanna push your luck? Maybe you could outrace a bullet and snag this guy from my hands after I've pulled the trigger and before a bullet kills him dead?" White raised an eyebrow, taunting Goku.

"Y-You monster!" Eighter clutched his fists together, in a manner mirroring Goku. "You have nothing to gain from blowing me up, we're all going to die together! You've got nothing to gain from abusing Goku either, you're just doing it because you like it!"

"I will not be given a psych-evaluation by a toaster!" White kicked the village chief forward while he charged for his control panel from which he observed the entire tower. "I had considered offering you work but… I'd rather see the Monster Buyon eat you up!"

Eighter got off Goku. "Sorry, sorry…" he rubbed the back of his head, apologizing with a goofy smile. He looked like he felt bad about falling on top of Goku with all of his colossal, mechanical frame but he knew that Goku was tougher than to be fazed by something like this.

"I knew you self-righteous pricks would fall for it. This turned out quite well for me, I won't even need to die this way. Now you'll feed my Buyon well. Careful, the invincible Buyon has not had a feast for a while, I'm afraid you will find him quite famished and his hunger quite… Shocking…" White cringed into his own knuckle while he imagined all the gruesome ways in which someone like the monster Buyon could have ended this pair.

"Hmm? You mean this bag of bones?" Goku leaned and pointed at a lifeless husk comprised of a tall stack of bones and a pink, moldy and putrid coat of skin hanging from it. The corpse did not even have a set of eyes, only a pair of swallowing holes, as deep as the described craving of the creature this once was.

"Huh…" Commander White stared at his prized executioner, or rather what was left of him. "No way!" came the denial stage. "Buyon can't be dead, I fed him every single man to have reached the sixth floor!"

"Eh?" Goku scratched his cheek. "Didn't you say nobody got past that Metallitron guy?"

Commander White shriveled in misery like a penetrated inflatable tube man. It took him almost no time at all to switch from being defeated and jumping back to his original plan. The cornered commander grabbed his hostage and pointed his gun back at his face. He aimed his gun at the hole through which he had imagined the boy and the rebellious artificial human to emerge from but was surprised by a whole different kind of entrant making her way to the top floor.

The foundations of the entire tower shook and rumbled, the tower leaned forward in a dangerous enough degree for most of its surviving inhabitants to think that it was about to collapse when Chayote flashed into the room, having just busted through two whole floors of hardened steel to get there.

The village chief cornered himself and wrapped his arms around his head. He lucked out that all the shifting of the floor forced Commander White to let go of him on accident and not just blow his head off, as it may have very easily turned out. Even while Commander White had no more leverage over the Saiyan, the teen extended the remote she clutched in her hand.

"Here's your stupid remote, now do you have any more robots here or not?" She grumbled.

White leaned forward with shot-out eyes and a face lengthened by the shock that befell him after he had realized that the Saiyan still played by the rules he set out of her, despite the fact that he no longer had anything to threaten her with.

"Power Pole, Extend!" Goku's voice came from below as both the shorter Saiyan and the artificial human hanging on his back rose up from the hole. Artificial Human No. 8 just flopped on his face awkwardly while Goku performed a flip to round his landing up and make it neat and flashy. The brat then turned his furious face at Commander White.

"Don't give him the remote, Chayote." Goku declared. "He's through!"

"Meh, I went through so much trouble to find it, plus, I'm still curious how he would blow Artificial Human No. 8 up when the remote only has one button and it both activates and de-activates him." Chayote shrugged and tossed the remote at Commander White. White dived forward to catch it but the only thing he caught was Goku's roaring kick striking him right in the face and sending the commander flying. The surprising show of strength appeared to confuse even Goku himself. The boy must not have realized yet he was multiple times stronger than before, or at least only realized that he was stronger but not yet comprehended by how much.

"It's okay," Artificial Human No. 8 approached the frightened village chief with a welcoming smile. Due to the unnatural and very monstrous appearance of Eighter, it did not help the village chief's situation whatsoever.

"Get back! I said get away, you monster!" the village chief groaned before crawling on the floor to the remote that Commander White had failed to catch and pressing the button in the middle with both his thumbs as if attempting to scoop the button out altogether. Goku yelled out something unintelligible while Chayote just grinned, she wondered if that was how one was supposed to make this primitive device operate.

The command center that Commander White chose to close himself off to darkened as television screens descended all over the walls and the windows. The television screens flashed and displayed something blurry before the image sharpened and cleared out.

"Hoo, you're such a naughty girl, take this!" a young and voluptuous woman in a pink ninja suit splashed about in Murasaki's artificial pond, as displayed on all the screens at once.

"Ah, you've splashed me! Murasaki-kun is going to be so mad!" a purple haired woman of similar rating on the attractiveness scale and no modesty whatsoever, judging from her choice of clothing, shrieked as cold water soaked her fishnet bodysuit.

"Hmm? What's that?" Goku wondered. "That doesn't seem like it's going to blow Eighter up at all…"

"Umm… Chayote-san… Where did you get that remote?" Artificial Human No. 8 poked two of his fingers in shyness as he could not bear to look at the erotic videos being displayed on all those high-definition screens. The village chief, however, was a whole different matter entirely, the man gawked at the images, failing to pick a single monitor to view the video from. He was distracted by the attractive Earthlings enough to stop caring that much about Artificial Human No. 8 being in the same room as him.

"None of the Murasaki had it. I checked inside the little hut he has, it had a bunch of pictures of those ladies and this remote…" Chayote shrugged. It appeared that the true location of the remote would be lost in the vastness of time-space.

"Whatever, we've rescued the village chief…" Goku smiled and gave Chayote and Eighter a peace gesture with his right hand while his mouth grinned like a little monkey who had gotten its tiny paws on a melon. "Let's go back to Jingle Village, I'm hungry!"

"Chayote-san… You should come too." Artificial Human No. 8 did not rush to invite the female Saiyan immediately but he did so nonetheless. He was too polite to mind the fact that the very alien he just invited to eat with him would have been fine killing him and making a spaceship from his parts and has almost resulted in his destruction multiple times that very same day.

"I don't care much about this village but… I could eat." Chayote shrugged. She did show off her grumpiness by wrapping her arms over her chest and pouting her lips but her lower lip continued to pulse with blood rushing inside as her belly growled.

"Hey, village chief, are you coming?" Goku looked back at the chief who was still slouched over on the ground and stared at the video.

"I don't like violence but I will absolutely topple this tower." Artificial Human No. 8 declared, "You should not linger around here, Sir."

"Yeah, yeah… Just keep going, I'll catch up!" the village chief waved his hand at the door.

"You know, I should kill you two for forgetting to let me in on the fact that this blasted place had a maze and a hidden floor…" Chayote grumbled while giving Eighter a cold stare.

"Ah, I apologize, it slipped my mind…" Artificial Human No. 8 scratched his head in apology while Goku laughed it off.

"You've busted through anyway!" he waved his hand at it.

"I'm surprised that nobody has found this Dragon Ball yet." the patriarch of the Jingle Village family, one that saved Goku and then that Goku saved only for them required saving once again, something that Chayote rose to the occasion for, remarked.

"Whoo… I'm stuffed!" Goku relaxed in his chair while his eyes made an unpleasant flicker due to rising nausea deep down. The young Saiyan only stopped eating when he physically could no longer do that. "Outdid you again, Cha… Hmm, where's Chayote?" the boy wondered.

"She's out in the snow. Haven't you noticed her leaving?" the little, red-haired girl replied, looking horrified by how abstract minded Goku got when eating.

"Actually…" Artificial Human No. 8 pulled out a hanky and placed it on the table, letting it unfurl and a tiny, orange orb with stars to roll out from its capture. "I found it some time ago but I kept it to myself because I've heard Commander White say he was going to kill all the villagers once he found it."

An uncomfortable silence took over the room. That was the status quo until a boisterous thud of the wooden chair and a declarative stare from the side of the village chief.

"What kindness! To think that I mistook you for a monster when we first met, I apologize! I insist that you stay in Jingle Village, if you have nowhere better to go, that is! Goddamn it, I'll adopt you myself if I have to!" the village chief straight out yelled out into the face of the Artificial Human. Nobody must have taught this man how to deal with his feelings, which resulted in such an off-putting expression of emotion.

"Heh heh… Thank you!" Artificial Human No. 8 scratched his head and nodded it a few times. "Nobody did anything this nice to me for years!" the big guy sniffled.

"Are you going to stay too, Goku?" the little girl wondered.

"Absolutely not." Chayote declared after entering the back into the house, covered in snow. A condition she fixed by shaking the layers of snow off indoors. "He owes me military-grade tech samples I can build my spaceship out of and I won't let him waste time until he gives me that back!"

"Nah," Goku shook his head and then pointed at the Two-Star Dragon Ball. "That isn't my Grandpa, my grandpa's memento is the Four-Stars."

"If it is military-grade gear you need, you can always check around the remains of the White Ribbon Army bases. The place is full of warehouses that were just left abandoned once the tower crumbled and the soldiers just scattered." The village chief suggested, addressing Chayote directly.

"Yeah, but don't you want to leave in the morning?" Goku wondered.

"That's just fine, I'll check them right now, you go and have your beauty sleep if you want while I myself work off your debt." Chayote flipped her hand off while turning back and leaving through the door. She wasn't sure why but hearing the village chief adopt Artificial Human No. 8 earlier made her extra layer of grumpy. The Saiyan extended her palm and tried forming a Ki blast. Tried being the keyword.

"To hell with this truthful to oneself bullshit… I don't need this power, I'll just kick the ass of whoever I face with bare hands, to hell with this Ki nonsense!" Chayote roared out while her Ki erupted in an explosive outburst of aura that sent snow all around in a blizzard-like, spiraling fury. The Saiyan leaped into the air and dashed onward towards where the Muscle Tower used to stand before the oversized tin-can toppled it.

Not only was she unable to destroy him and use him for parts, but the blasted brute also wrecked the tower too, what if it still had some gear to salvage? Son Goku was supposed to help them get back to Planet Vegeta and the Frieza Army but he was actually kicking Chayote down the figurative progress ladder.


	25. Revenge of Dr Gero!

"Moved from Muscle Tower to vacate the floor for the Monster Buyon." Chayote read a sign on an abandoned warehouse. One of the multiple scrap rectangles put together in an afternoon only to store obsolete technology or things that required some privacy or special procedures or solitude to fix. With the tower seldom being raided and serving as a military base and an imprisonment facility, it made sense that someone would like a separate facility to store projects in.

The good news was that there was some gear that looked advanced enough to survive hi-speed space travel. The shells of the Artificial Humans in the works appeared sturdy, some seemed sturdier than even Chayote could dent which surprised the Saiyan. She had never witnessed technology posing a notable threat before, not like this. Not to someone of her power level.

The lights in the eyes of the Artificial Humans lit up, startling Chayote as they lunged at her all at once. The space to move around in was limited, then there was also the human factor, the revived Artificial Humans just straight out scared Chayote and in those moments one tended to forget the profound power difference. These automatons acted odd, they did not punch, kick or claw, they just wrapped their limbs around Chayote and locked them, forcing the reinforced alloy comprising their bodies to bend out of shape so that it stayed permanently locked.

Escaping this lock was not quite a matter of strength, of which Chayote had plenty, it was more of a matter of extreme contortionism she was incapable of. The group wrapping around her soon began resembling a body pile. Chayote grunted and struggled, she could dislocate and further bend the combined alloys out of shape but by doing so she only trapped herself further in their hold.

"Impressive, aren't they? Artificial Humans No. 5 through 11, with only one absence, although you've already met No. 8. Given how you're here, I'd reckon he failed to kill you, I told Commander White my Artificial Humans were not ready yet. It would be decades before they could kill the likes of you. I'm afraid whether it is the Red Ribbon or the White Ribbon, nobody here takes the word of a genius scientist for what it should amount to." A bald, grey man walked out from the shade, flipping his long lab coat to bypass a disorderly mess of metallic limbs that the charge of his steel brigade left behind.

"Your puppets can't kill me, if you want me out of this planet, that's exactly why I've come here. Give me those drafts and I'll be in space before you can finish reading the blueprint to one of those things." Chayote tried to reason with this Earthling. For the first time ever, one of these disgusting and devious bastards had something to threaten her with – she needed those robots. She couldn't go back to square one, not again. Something deep down in her demanded that she won this encounter and returned to Jingle Village with what she needed.

"I am afraid I cannot do that, girl. You have ruined my life, you see. You do not know this yet, you wouldn't care even if you did. All you leave behind you is destruction, fire, and bodies. You've parted me from my son, my boy and… You've destroyed the only solace I had left in my life after his death." The originator of these Artificial Humans got dangerously close to the mangled mess of limbs and metal that Chayote laid buried and held under. The scientist almost taunted the teen Saiyan to bust out when he knew she wouldn't.

"Look, I… I didn't destroy your stupid base. Your own Commander did that!" Chayote roared out, trying to make all of her Ki explode from inside her in a singular explosive wave. A feat that, she knew, would have devastated and torn all of those submission-specialist skeletons off of her. The Saiyan had wondered if she'd come to regret spitting at her previous desire to turn her body and mind into one and master Ki manipulation that sometimes worked and sometimes did not, what she did not know at the time of making that reckless decision to ignore that was how soon she would regret it.

Not even a fart left Chayote's body, despite her utmost efforts to make her Ki erupt from every pore in her body in an explosive bubble.

"Just so you know why you will die. My name is Dr. Gero. You did not kill my son, he had died some time ago, fighting the military of West City, over the territory of Ginger Town, where the Red Ribbon Base was initially to be located. The Red Ribbon failed, they had the mightier military but our forces were stretched too thin, we were fighting all over the world and, because of that, our ignoramus of a leader got pushed back into the depths behind the Sacred Land of Korin, somewhere he deemed he'd be safe from West City's persecution." Dr. Gero employed the novel strategy of boring Chayote to death. The Saiyan continued to wrangle, twist and test his improvised restraining method, the scientist saw that but he did not appear to be all too pressured by it, something that worried Chayote a tiny bit.

"After my son's passing, I had buried myself in work. I've made magic because what I intended to do required the hands of a magician. Nobody, not even Dr. Brief could accomplish as much in artificial human technology as I did. I suppose I was lucky that the Red Ribbon failed to plant themselves at the backdoor of West City – they'd have taken Dr. Brief to work for them and I would have become obsolete. Obsolete things tend to be treated with a bullet to the brain around those parts. Regardless, I very nearly succeeded in the task of returning my son to life as an artificial human, however, due to the fact that there was only one shot of getting it right, I requested a transfer to this forgotten place – the then General White was the most interested in the Artificial Human technology and had plenty of samples for me to master what I was about to accomplish, before I devoted my only son's body to my miracle."

"Is that why Eighter is such a lousy piece of garbage? Because you were still experimenting?" Chayote tried to bite Dr. Gero with words by insulting his work. She had seen some of the alien engineers overseeing that Planet Vegeta and its military functioned perfectly every day get too sensitive about that sort of thing and she counted to get a reaction from Gero as well. The man pulled out a revolver and pointed it at Chayote, he considered firing, maybe emptying the whole gun but his hand wavered and with a depressed breath, the man caved, dropping the gun down.

"I suppose he would be considered a failure to simpler minds. Contrary to what I was instructed to do, I never intended to make my son as a weapon to people that have gotten him killed, to begin with. My boy was always meant to be a kinder soul, one that fought to protect the people dear to him and no other reason, just like he was in life. The one you know as Artificial Human No. 8 is what you would call a beta version of what my son was to become." Dr. Gero explained while picking the gun from the floor and pocketing it into his lab coat again. From the same pocket he pulled the gun, the scientist revealed a single remote control device, similar to the one that activated and supposedly de-activated Artificial Human No. 8.

"When you… Or Commander Red… Nuked the Red Ribbon Base, you've left nothing there to return to. Only a radioactive wasteland I could not approach in miles. It would have taken me years before I could have built something capable of getting me inside the bunker where my son's body is likely still held. Just to see if his body had not been ruined by the surrounding destruction and if the bunker served its function. That is why you will die, the Red Ribbon may have killed my boy, you, however, you've sealed the deal and just when I began working on a way to bypass the results of your reckless rampage, you've kicked the White Ribbon down to the curb as well. Now my work would have to start anew, I cannot stomach the thought of working for the Blue Ribbon army either. I would likely not survive the decades needed for me to build my suit from scratch. You will find out today that the mind is a sharper tool for vengeance than muscle." Dr. Gero raised the remote in a showy manner, he intended Chayote to beg him to not do whatever he was to do or sweat in horror but… Truthfully, she felt just kind of confused…

"Wait… You don't think those tin cans can kill me, do you?" she muttered.

"You utter imbecile, are you not aware of the bombs located in every single one of my creations? Every single one of them is mightier than the nuke that destroyed the base and a much purer version of the weapon. It will not taint this land for brighter minds of the future, it will just remove the pesky elements of the present." Dr. Gero explained his plan before his thumb reached for the button.

"You fool. You're standing right next to me. You'll die too." Chayote raised an eyebrow, not looking all too impressed by the man's desperate plea for revenge and the abyssal depths he had sunken to so that he could claim that comeuppance.

"I have been killed long ago by the bullet that killed my son. Farewell, alien monster." Dr. Gero closed his eyes and pressed the button. Whereas the activation and de-activation of the button were initiated by pressing the only button on the remote, the activation of the self-destruction bombs within the bodies of the artificial humans were set off by pressing the button and holding it down for a short instant.

A cascade of white flashes expanded over Chayote, blinding her for a moment while the entire warehouse district sunk to white. Dr. Gero's lab coat rustled in the escalating force shockwave that soon tore him to shreds before the heatwave of the super-blast even hit the man's body. The intense sensations of forceful pressure of the shockwaves detonating all around her and the unbearable heat overwhelmed Chayote's senses and made her perception white out and seemingly skip forward to when she could once more process the environment around her. Dr. Gero planned for that time to never come…

* * *

Chayote's eyes opened to a blur. Electric pain seeped through her oculars right through her brain like long needles had pierced it from one end to another and then got rattled and jerked around without any subtlety of mercy. The Saiyan wanted to move but that noble quest failed before it even started. Even if Chayote willed to move just a muscle, there was some deeper thought that convinced her otherwise. It was as if the Saiyan had known all along that movement would have been pointless.

The sewn together and chunky face of Artificial Human No. 8 peeked from the upper side of the bag on which Chayote laid with an overjoyed smile. A tear the size of an adult nose hung from the right eye of the gentle artificial human.

"You've recovered!" he stated the obvious with a degree of cheer that suggested that the fact may not have been quite as obvious as Chayote had taken it to be. "I guess those life reading systems of mine really do work."

"Did you just sit here and watch me sleep?" Chayote grumbled. Even when she was awake and chipper, grumbling comprised an important part of her day's work, there was no reason to believe that recovery after injury would have made things any different.

"I am an Artificial Human, I do not need sleep or food." Eighter declared. Once Chayote did brave up to move around, the giant gasped and began to force the young Saiyan to settle back down. "That explosion… It was an Artificial Human, wasn't it?"

"Several, actually…" Chayote growled in pain before giving up and slumping in the bed. A sigh escaped her chest. "Some old prune blew all of them up with a remote control. They were failed models, apparently, and yet each one of them blasted with the same force that decimated the Red Ribbon Base. The total collection actually hurt me… Who knows, maybe a good decade or two and the bombs would become advanced enough to threaten the whole planet?"

It had been a while since someone or something reminded Chayote she was mortal and everything she stood to lose if she died. Perhaps she truly had taken the difficulty of her second life for granted and underestimated too many threats?

"So that's the kind of device that's in me then…" Artificial Human No. 8 looked down with solemn self-reflection. "I cannot threaten this village or its people. Suno-chan and the village chief were so kind to me. If somebody from the army came and blew me up, I dread to even imagine it…"

True to his word, the artificial human shook in his boots despite wearing a turtleneck and a blazer large enough to be someone's parachute. Chayote could have used it as a tent.

"So what are you going to do?" Chayote wondered. The giant had such an aversion to fighting that the Saiyan almost wanted to see the artificial human declare some sort of vendetta against the splinter groups of the former Red Ribbon and hunt all of them down one by one. "All those artificial humans I found blew up in my face so if you want to die and give me your parts, I would get it. That bomb might make a wicked thruster…"

"I… Uh…" Eighter looked confused.

"It's fine if you don't wanna die." Chayote breathed out another heavy sigh. She just felt so useless and vulnerable lying in bed like this. "There's this woman in West City, she's an inventor, she might be able to remove the bomb inside your body. She's the one who will build me my spaceship too but that might take a long time even after I get the parts. Just because my head is wobbly and cracked way too hard and no other reason, I am willing to let you cut in line."

Goku's childish and somewhat simian manner of laughter attracted the attention of both Artificial Human No. 8 and Chayote. The boy just stood in the doorway leaned over and pressing his belly that ached out of the tension that the cheer he felt deep down put on it. His tail waggled fast enough to crack somebody's bones if it hit them like an improvised whip.

"I knew it, Chayote's actually a nice person," Goku exclaimed with his eyes closed and still wiping his nose that never really stopped sniffling since the Saiyan stopped brawling.

"Shut up. What are you doing here? Weren't you looking for your Grandpa?" Chayote wondered.

"Well, obviously, I was going to wait until you recovered." Goku opened his eyes, looking a bit confused as to why Chayote would even imply that he'd just leave her injured and out. It was likely him who got to the Saiyan and scooped her up from the wreckage of the abandoned warehouses.

"Obviously…" Chayote snorted. Had she been at all capable of shame, she'd have blushed at recalling when she buggered off with her own business instead of seeing Goku recover and he was one of the most important people on this rock.

"Anyway, the village chief helped me repair Kinto but my Dragon Radar's not working. Bulma gave you a new one, didn't she? I figured we could go to the next army base together. There can't be that many left, plus, you're still looking for parts, aren't you?" Goku scratched the back of his head. He knew full well how this sounded, him expressing how much he cared for Chayote's recovery and then give a valid reason to why he was unable to proceed without her. Although his initial declaration of good intent did sound genuine.

"Whatever, we're heading to West City anyway so it works out." Chayote sat up, still holding her back in pain. "We'll drop Artificial Human No. 8 there, you have Bulma fix your Dragon Radar, then we'll head for the closest bunch of Dragon Balls. Chayote tried pulling out her own radar but noticed that there was no reaction whatsoever to button pressed either. The aura of Ki erupting from her body during the blast must have protected the radar a tiny bit, as it did to some of her clothing, but the radar was simply not built to withstand point-blank bombing from weapons of mass destruction, few things were.

Was she intent on dropping Eighter by Capsule Corp because that was how she felt or was this just a façade to look nice while she truly wanted to have the radar repaired? No. That was reaching it. Chayote must have truly wanted this because she did not find out about her radar being busted as well until after she had suggested the idea to Eighter and then settled on it. Also, she did not really need the radar now that she found Goku.

For some reason, settling these sort of things straight made Chayote feel more at ease inside, alleviated her pain and made her want to just relax and get some sleep.

* * *

A few days later, the two Saiyans, atop their respective Kinto clouds took off to the enthusiastic farewells from the people of the Jingle Village. Wearing Suno's felt odd but it was clothing, something that Chayote had trouble with all the time, the jacket would begin feeling far too warm once the two would leave the north-south but Chayote counter on the jacket being too small to the point where some of her belly taking in the pelting of the upper layers of the constant snowfall to chill her out then.

"Bye Bye! I'll come back to visit someday!" Goku waved back at the crowd whereas Chayote just ignored them. She did not even have the excuse for ignoring them that Goku did, what with the lumbering artificial human hanging on his back, appearing quite capable of riding the Kinto, something that may have added a bit of spice to Chayote's grumpy soup.

It worked out that Eighter was so strong and durable, even if he had some of the strongest aversions to fighting Chayote had ever seen, that way he would survive the hi-speed traveling method of the full-speed Kinto.


	26. The Daring Hostage Situation

"Whaaa! West City is huuuge!" Goku shrieked out in both excitement and surprise. Chayote was not aware that her fellow Saiyan had not yet been in this place or, possibly, any of the other larger Earth cities, since, had he been there, he'd have not been nearly as surprised by this show of technological advancement and Earthling ingenuity.

"It is incredible…" Artificial Human No. 8 nodded in agreement. Whereas, in the beginning, the meaty giant reserved himself to shouting, crying and begging for the speedy flight to stop, by now he had gotten used to this method of transportation and resigned to observe the marvels of the world he was walled off from for far too long.

While looking at this artificial creature that Chayote used to consider pathetic and look down on in anger and irritation because of its dismissal of all violence altogether unless his mind was entirely lost in the moment, the girl felt a nagging feeling of warmth in her chest that prompted her to touch it from the outside and try to squeeze to her own flesh through the entirely too small furry jacket she was wearing.

"We're lucky that Chayote's here with us. I'd have gotten lost in this place!" Goku turned to Chayote with a smile, which made the teen Saiyan leap up startled by the sudden realization she was in the focus of attention and that she could not just wander off in her thoughts and inner trips to self-discovery.

"Some friend of Bulma's you turned out to be." Chayote cut back, trying to sound for what she had made sound normal for her. "Never even visited her once?"

"I've been pretty busy. When we were looking for the Dragon Balls the first time we didn't get the chance and after I've been training with the old-timer. Then the tournament and… Well, I'm doing it now." Goku laughed out after a rather reserved period of recollection. "Is something wrong?" he wondered looking at Chayote who kept staring at her right foot and acting as if she had lost her balance and was about to slip off of the Kinto cloud.

"No, it's… Nothing, although I could have sworn my right foot nearly plunged through the cloud." Chayote grunted before getting the handle of the cloud. The pair directed their Kinto to blitz right at the massive dome of Capsule Corp and landed outside. Kinto lowered beside Goku, letting the frightened Artificial Human No. 8 to also get off of the cloud.

The pair of Saiyans approached the door and saw it open in front of them. The familiar face of the receptionist twisted in aggravation when she saw Chayote. Her sights kept switching between Chayote, Goku and Artificial Human No. 8 and, frankly, nobody could have blamed her, they were an odd trio to be certain.

"Back again with your delinquent gang?" the receptionist acted brave as her hand hovered above some button on her table. Likely the one that would have called for reinforcements.

"I suppose." Chayote scratched her head, she was not entirely sure about how she should have gone around correcting that suggestion. "Can we see Bulma?"

"Bulma is away." Dr. Brief introduced himself, walking out from a corridor to the right as he raised his hand in a welcoming gesture that appeared similar to the way in which Bora and Upa welcomed people that were not to be scared away or killed for entering the Sacred Land. "She's at the Kame House with her boyfriend."

"Tsk." Chayote exclaimed in frustration. She was not all too fond of the idea of visiting that lot. Plus, it was unlikely that Bulma would have been in the mood of fixing Artificial Human No. 8 there or had the appropriate tools.

"Who's this?" Goku pointed at Bulma's father.

"Little boy, don't you know it's rude to point fingers at people!?" the receptionist jumped up in place in offense by that blunt gesture.

"It's Bulma's father. Bulma's father, this is Son Goku, Bulma's friend. Hmm…" Chayote scratched her chin. "From what I recall, you are quite a genius yourself, right?" the Saiyan asked the scientist.

"Well…" Dr. Brief scratched the back of his head while literally shoving the praise away from him with his left hand.

"Such vulgarity!" the receptionist walked out from her stand and gestured with an open palm at the scientist who appeared to be almost half her size. "This man is Dr. Brief, he is the brilliant founder of Capsule Corporation and the inventor of capsule technology."

"Hmm. The capsules Earthlings use are a unique piece of technology, unseen anywhere else in the universe." Chayote continued to rub her chin while her mind processed all of the information. The fact that such a scientist and his family were to be very useful to the Frieza Force when the time came were of secondary importance right now. "Could you then fix Artificial Human No. 8?" Chayote inquired of the genius.

"Huh? Oh… Dunno, what's wrong with him?" Dr. Brief began walking around and examining Artificial Human No. 8.

"I have a bomb inside of me that can go off if somebody presses and holds the remote. I want to live in Jingle Village with the village chief and Suno-chan but I can't while the bomb is in my body." Eighter explained by himself. The underlying passion of getting rid of the bomb and living a worry-free life sold the request better than Chayote ever could have, these Earthlings were suckers for sentiment, the Saiyan observed.

"A bomb? Interesting… Why would somebody put a bomb in somebody? Seems impractical…" Dr. Brief scratched his head in bemusement while walking around Artificial Human No. 8 and examining him like a coat on a sale.

"He's an Artificial Human created by Dr. Gero from the White Ribbon army." Chayote explained.

"Dr. Gero? Oh my… White Ribbon army?" Dr. Brief kept switching his eyebrows up and down, while the mention of Dr. Gero's name invited a familiar flare in the man's eyes, he did not look all too familiar about the man's association with any armies.

"The White Ribbon army, Dr. Brief, sir," the receptionist explained. "A couple of years ago the Red Ribbon Army was destroyed by some natural disaster, it seems, after that time the remaining army officials who were stationed all over the world have created splinter groups of their own."

"Hmm, your security is well versed in the military situation of your planet." Chayote commended the receptionist woman.

"Oh, Stockings-san isn't in the security staff. She just welcomes the guests to the building." Dr. Brief waved his hand at the trusty employee.

"You don't need to be interested to become knowledgeable about these sort of things." Stockings pointed out. "Haven't you read or watched the news at all?"

"Haven't had the time…" Dr. Brief lamented. "That's why I have people around to talk to…"

"So, can you do it?" Chayote brought the subject back.

"Without some sort of a blueprint… It will be difficult, it might take a couple of days to familiarize myself with the design alone, if there's a bomb inside of him, I'll need to not set it off by accident. Might take more than a week." Dr. Brief mumbled to himself although, judging from the content of his words, they were meant for the wider audience. "You kids can settle down in the meantime, I heard Panchy is giving people out cookies again and she loves making strangers cocoa."

"Over a week…" Goku grumbled. "What are we supposed to do in the meantime around here? Do you have a place to train?"

"A gym, sure. I don't really exercise myself so it will be a bit dusty but feel welcome to help yourselves." Dr. Brief bowed his head in hospitality.

"Hmph. What good will an Earthling gym be for us? We're far stronger than any human on this entire planet." Chayote complained.

"Oh, I figured you guys would be stronger than ordinary, Yamcha, Bulma's boyfriend trained here on occasion in the last days before the World Martial Arts Tournament. I had the staff adapt the gym to his increased requirements. May have gone a bit overboard though… Oh, do mind that the gym is smart and it records your biological data in order to assist your training better. Don't get startled if you hear voices or computing sounds and break something." Dr. Brief replied before leading Artificial Human No. 8 away.

"I would like some clothes. I borrowed these from a girl half my size. Something like what your security wears will suffice if you could direct me to your armory." Chayote asked of the scientist who jumped up and turned around.

"Oh, uh… Stockings-san, please show Chayote to the dressing room and let her pick something." Dr. Brief instructed with softness in his voice that would have leaned stronger on the side of suggesting it rather than ordering.

"Alright. I'm going to hit the gym and start training!" Goku got all hyped up.

"Don't start having foolish thoughts of matching me, let alone surpassing me." Chayote turned around. "Both of us may be low-class Saiyans but I've been properly trained and conditioned on Planet Vegeta whereas you let Muten Roshi waste your time with his life lessons."

"We'll just have to see about that!" Goku grinned with a smirk that implied a gauntlet being thrown.

* * *

Chayote entered the guest room, following Bulma's mother who was just strolling across the building handing out people milk and cookies in vast quantities. It seemed confusing that someone married to the head of this facility to would stoop herself so low as to serve her employees but Chayote had long since stopped feeling disappointed by those sorts of things.

Goku turned at Chayote, blinking a pair of times in rapid succession. He was sitting on his butt with his head almost stuck onto the television screen. His muscles were twitching and his movements seemed a bit numb which implied that he had been training but he did not smell like it. Likely he was just after a shower.

"Oh, didn't recognize you in that monkey-suit," Goku stated nonchalantly before turning back at his movie. Some peculiar, ancient-looking flying mechanisms were buzzing about in that television production, firing those pesky Earthling projectiles that, despite failing to even pinch Chayote, appeared powerful enough to down one of these flying apparatuses with ease.

"It's not a monkey-suit." Chayote wrapped her hands over her chest. "It's what military and security forces wear on this planet."

"Not true, I've seen a bald guy outside handing out papers to Bulma's father and he was in terrible shape." Goku looked back at Chayote. Despite sitting right next to the television screen, close enough for his face to touch it if he leaned forward any more, Goku did not appear all too invested in the motion picture he was watching.

"Look at your movie, you dolt, that military lady is wearing a similar uniform." Chayote pointed at the screen where a distraught female military officer was confessing her feelings into the microphone, transmitted to the cockpit of her beloved war hero who was about to engage six other fighters in a dogfight. The woman's hand clutched the hand of a little man, likely younger even than Goku, one of blond hair and deep blue eyes.

"I guess…" Goku hummed in an unintelligible manner for a bit before pouting his cheeks. "What's with you and the military, anyway?"

"Shut up, you promised me we would spar!" Chayote tried to change the topic away from one that would have forced her to look deeper at herself. "Now you've pissed me off so I'm not gonna hold back. You should feel grateful… You're going to get another freebie power-up."

"You're gonna fight wearing that? It seems awfully stuffy and uncomfortable…" Goku raised an eyebrow while standing up on both feet and stretching out.

"Less so than the Turtle School Uniform that Muten Roshi made me wear." Chayote squinted.

Goku laughed out, likely knowing exactly what the fellow Saiyan was saying. From his reaction, Chayote was almost certain that the old man had made Goku wear lingerie too at some point which raised a whole handful of questions all of its own special category. Old geezers tended to be a bit on the pervy side on this planet, for whatever reason, that, however, went a bit beyond just being pervy.

"We interrupt your scheduled motion picture – "The High-Flying Sky-Aces" with Andrew Buffon, Alisson Pickford and the great screen debut of Barry Kahn for this message!" a news presenter hijacked the television screen after a bright flash.

"Hmm? See? That guy wears a monkey suit too… Doesn't look like a soldier." Goku pointed at the tiny and frail man of rectangular facial shapes and a funny, brush-like mustache.

"The commander of the Blue Ribbon Army has demanded our screen time. Normally we would not have negotiated with a rogue military commander that has threatened to wipe out West City on multiple occasions in the past but, given the circumstances, we have decided to grant his request. Our reasons shall become clear once you hear him out. Mr. Blue…" the anchorman turned to the giant screen behind him as the camera closed in to it. The quality of watching a screen, viewed from another screen left something to be desired but the general details stayed clear.

The screen rippled and passed through a trial by flashy static before turning solid and showing a man spinning around in a chair while dangling his leather-boot-donning feet up and down, all around having a gay old time. From the hands of a very concerned-looking soldier, the spinning gentleman picked up a small bucket which he promptly flipped over his head, allowing rings of roses to rain over his head while the man threw the bucket over his head, allowing it to fly to the other end of the office while the roses continued to shower him.

"Eat your heart out." Chayote smirked at Goku, loosening the grip of her hands over her chest over the revelation that Commander Blue wore a uniform not that much different from the one that Chayote snagged from Stockings' locker with the woman's "permission".

"Whatever, you're not getting me into one of those…" Goku showed his tongue to the television screen.

"I won't bother. This uniform is just a temporary substitute until we rejoin the Frieza Army and get our armor and scouters back." Chayote shrugged.

"Ummm… Mr. Blue… You are on-air right now…" the anchorman spoke to the screen, the entire studio was frozen and dead-silent in confusion of seeing this foul heel engaging himself in such buffoonery.

Commander Blue froze in mid-showering-in-flowers-motion. With shot-out, petrified eyes the man turned his chair around and stared right at the camera. His eyebrows began twitching and with each successive twitch, they formed an even steeper downward slope while the rows of his teeth ground against one another and veins shot out on the side of his face. He pointed at the camera with a shaking hand that turned red to match the bloody color of his face.

"Execute this man at once!" Commander Blue demanded. A handful of monkeys in uniforms flooded the office and dragged the poor cameraman out. Chayote's stare sharpened when she saw the flashes of a familiar scenery behind the steel doors to a portable station that Commander Blue spoke from.

"That was the Kame House…" Chayote mumbled.

"What? The Kame House? But… Why would this weirdo be there? Did old-timer take him in as his student too?" Goku pressed his finger to his lips as he pondered in confusion.

A fusillade of gunfire noises made Commander Blue's face turn to pure ecstasy. The anchors tried to cut the feed but they appeared conflicted about that decision. Showing hints of actual murder on live television must have been taboo for those softy Earthlings but something prompted them to overcome their pussy natures. This made Chayote very interested in what Commander Blue was about to say.

"Ahh, don't you just love that symphony?" Commander Blue closed his eyes and continued to spin his chair around, this time more gently as if enjoying a musical composition rather than in the more childish and roundabout manner he was furling in before. "Anyway… I am Commander Blue and I am addressing not only the self-centered ninnyhammers from West City. The organization you once knew as the Red Ribbon Army has been destroyed. The Blue Ribbon Army will be picking up where its daddy left off. Behind the doors of my mobile military station is a small island, on which my scouts have picked up Bulma, the daughter of world-famous Dr. Brief. In a raid of the island we have managed to subdue her and a pair of her cohorts that have been too troublesome to kill, for now."

Commander Blue looked around the station, his soldiers all stiffened with icy panic as the eyes of their superior covered them and washed them away with frigid disdain.

"Imbeciles! Bring her in so that those feists know we're not buncombing them!" the Commander yelled out, pulling out his own gun from his back pocket. A pair of soldiers ran out, taking an uncomfortable pair of moments to bring tied up Bulma into the station and show her around.

"There! Now, as for our payment… For the release of Bulma, we would like something more than just money, that would be too easy from the corpulent money bags of Capsule Corps. No, we want the orbs known as Dragon Balls. For now, we do not have an exact replica to show you but… This is an artistic rendition of what one looks like." Commander Blue showed a piece of checkered paper with an orange circle drawn on it with a red star in the center. "If we do not receive any intelligence on the location of all seven balls within twenty-four hours, I will shoot Bulma in the face on live television. If we do not receive the balls themselves within five days from this very moment, I will shoot Bulma and all her less valuable bargaining chips for friends in the face on live television, then, I will use a missile to destroy the island on which they were relaxing before their capture. One way or the other, I will get those balls."

The transmission then went out with the same flash, then switch to static that it appeared in. The anchorman snapped back to talk directly to the camera, both anchors stood up and attempted to salvage the situation somewhat.

"We would like to remind our viewers that what Commander Blue said was untrue, we will not show the execution of young Bulma, if that comes to pass, on live television. He is a highly disturbed individual that does not know what he's talking about…" the anchor spoke before Goku jumped to his feet and pushed the TV off its stand, pulling the wire out of its socket in the process.

"That bastard!" Goku hissed out, his hair standing out like those of wild, scorned cat.

"I have use of Bulma yet. She is to build my spaceship. We cannot allow her to be harmed." Chayote declared with a cold expression while pushing her shoulder off of the wall she was using for support.

* * *

_**Author's Note: Okay, so before any pitchforks will be pulled over this completely inconsequential change of General Blue knowing exactly who Bulma is, I'll explain myself that:**_

_**1st - it never made any sense to me how nobody knew who Bulma was. She was the daughter of one of the most famous scientists and one of the most successful faces of business in the world, even at this time, also, one of the richest people on the planet.**_

_**2nd - there is another in-story reason that has a lot to do with a change I left early on in the arc that led to Commander Blue knowing a bit more about who Bulma is but I won't reveal which one yet so that it isn't a spoiler of my own story :)**_


	27. A Sack on the Beach

Yamcha roared out with his hands cupped together and aimed at the ocean. Krillin stood by his side, the two moved in perfect synchrony and together with the beams of light that fired from their hands split the ocean in a pair of parallel lines with the bit of water in the middle just splitting between the two larger waves to the sides.

"I don't get it. Do we have it or not?" Krillin whined out before collapsing on his bottom. Given the short stature of the martial artist, it was a very short fall for him.

"I don't think that someone's going to jump out and put a medal on your neck, Krillin. What you have is what you get. We can do it, but it's not quite on Goku's level and nowhere near Muten Roshi's." Yamcha breathed out.

"Yeah. The amount of Ki we can release is still too small, someone stronger than us could just blast our Kamehameha away if they put out enough Ki. Remember what Master Roshi said, someone with more Ki put into it could overpower any martial arts technique..." Krillin stuck out his tongue. "I'm winded."

"That means that we need to stop practicing the Kamehameha and spar." Yamcha walked a few meters aside and entered his fighting stance. His body looked about as much like it was made of lead as it must have felt for the worn-out martial artist but the man who used to be just a lowly desert bandit once had devotion to his cause of growing stronger and utilizing the tremendous opportunity Muten Roshi gave him, at the very least.

Krillin moaned before standing up and taking a fighting stance himself. "You seem to be adapting well…" it was unclear if the boy's words were meant as a compliment or as something derogatory, given his disdain of the brutal training regimen. This time, Muten Roshi oversaw their training only under rare circumstances and left them to themselves for the most part, however, every time Krillin sat on his behind he could almost feel the old man's eyes on him and hear the derogatory discouragements and prompts to quit that he used to get back in the day.

"I need to do as much as I can before Bulma comes to visit again." Yamcha made a malicious grin before launching himself at his sparring partner. The crooked palm strike chomped at Krillin's large, bald head, making the pint-sized warrior flinch. Before he could recover from the sudden attack, Yamcha's flurry took him over and Krillin whited out to protect himself from the hurt that Yamcha was inflicting.

"At least make an effort at defending yourself…" Yamcha postured with his arms on his hips, proud as a stork.

"I thought I saw you move but my body was too tuned out to react in time…" Krillin lamented, picking himself up from the sand and spitting the irksome grains out of his mouth. The damned thing stuck to his tongue so easily!

A thunderous rumble that shook the skies above attracted the attention of both martial artists. Krillin looked up while still on his bottom whereas Yamcha did his best to not break his showy stance, waiting for Bulma to ask what his pompous attitude was all about. True heroes didn't brag about their exploits but were kind enough to share about them when asked…

A flying car with the Capsule Corporation logo on the side landed on the beach, smacking more sand in Krillin's face but the child martial artist had been getting used to it by now and with each successive mouthful – tempered by it. Bulma jumped out from the car before the engine died out with the car having enough of a semblance of artificial intelligence to kill it itself.

"Yamcha!" she shrieked out, wrapping her arms around the overjoyed dolt and smothering him. Krillin picked himself up from the sand and patted his clothes to dust himself off. The young man was not prepared for Bulma to greet him as well, she must have truly been in an excellent mood.

"Hey, hey… No smooches for the old man?" Muten Roshi appeared in the doorway, always ready to strike wherever there were Pichi-Pichi gals for him to One-Two with.

"Hmph… I know better than that!" Bulma began appearing as her old self that everybody knew and loved. "In any case, I'm staying around for a while. I've submitted my exams upfront and left on prolonged summer vacation!"

"Well… I don't know… The place has been a bit crowded… Plus, I'm not sure Launch-san can even feed this many mouths." Muten Roshi acted as if he was actually considering Bulma's request.

"She could, if you helped her…" Bulma wrapped her hands over her chest, revealing a red band with a black gadget on the front. A type of watch that did not tell time, given how it lacked any capacity for showing anything or any visual indicators of any kind.

"I'm the owner of the island. You should be helping her, as a guest…" Muten Roshi pointed out, still not dropping his fake tone.

"How is Muten Roshi sounding as the reasonable one while all he's trying to do is lewd over Bulma-san?" Krillin mumbled to Yamcha. The two have grown a bit tighter due to the time they've spent training together.

"Fine, I'll give you something in return. What do you want? I've got all sorts of capsules with me…" Bulma took off her bag and began browsing her capsule case. It was then that her eyes fell on the watch she was wearing, making the girl lift her hand up and point at it for the old man.

"Humph… What does an old man need a watch for? I've got all the time in the world!" Muten Roshi shook his head, he began creeping up to Bulma, gently touching her with his hip. "Although… Just a bit of Paffu-Paffu…" he whimpered with an old man's blush as he made inappropriate gestures with his hands, reaching out for Bulma's chest.

"This isn't some usual watch!" Bulma jumped back, becoming desperate to sell her newest invention now. She pressed the button on it only to become encased in a bright aura and begin shrinking together with the aura that surrounded her until she was not much taller than a rodent. Something squeaky and unintelligible came from her side, forcing Muten Roshi to lean in closer to hear what she was saying but Bulma, having realized the problem, boosted herself back to normal size before repeating it.

"It's the Micro-Band – my newest invention. I've got too much time on my hands now that I'm not babysitting Goku while he breaks my stuff and Yamcha's away. You can have it if you let me stay. Chores are off the table though…" Bulma lured the old man, knowing full-well of the dirty thoughts running through his head at that moment. She was not sure exactly how he would go around exploiting it, maybe he'd shrink himself in front of the TV so that the breasts of all the attractive women there would seem even larger… She lacked the mind for perversion opportunities, it compensated elsewhere and Bulma could not have been happier that it did.

"I see, I see… Well then… Relax and feel yourself at home." Roshi snagged the watch off of Bulma's hand with all of his inhuman speed while remaining gentle enough to not leave as much as a dent or a scratch on the gadget. "Launch-san, we need more lemonade! At least four more boxes!"

"Whaaat!? But we have a whole box!" the voice of the gentle Launch came from the kitchen.

"Yes but Bulma's come to visit and she is a lemonade sinking machine. If you could be a dear and grab the submarine, go to the shop and pick some up. We'll drink ice tea in the meantime!" Muten Roshi kept on abusing the fact that Launch was also living under a similar deal with the old man and had promised to look after the home for him.

"A submarine? But what about the plane? It flies faster than the submarine." Launch covered her mouth horrified. The door closed shut in front of those two, leaving the three on the beach to themselves with only brief mutters of the conversation indoors.

"Nobody fixed the plane since Sea Turtle mixed it up with the submarine and went underwater with it to visit his sons. The submarine can both fly and move underwater but the plane can only fly, after all..." Muten Roshi kept on trying to convince Launch to buy an excessive load of lemonade.

"Geez, that geezer. I offered him any capsule but, of course, he'd pick something he could use to perv with… How come you never come in to defend my honor?" Bulma turned her furious glare at Yamcha who often found himself to be the go-to person to blame.

"Uh… I mean… He's my master, Bulma… I have to respect him, you know?" Yamcha tried weaseling his way out of a tough spot.

"Oh, you mean you don't have to respect me!? I'll have to know that as the lady of your life I have priority over all other priorities and oaths in your life!" Bulma postured at Yamcha who just took it all in, decided to take the verbal beating and hope to live another day.

"Now I don't feel bad about losing to Yamcha at all… The poor guy needs all the wins he can get…" Krillin pondered to himself, remaining a neutral observer of the situation in this case.

A squeeze forced all traces of air out of the bodies of Yamcha and Krillin. It was tough to tell what was going on in the beginning, especially when Yamcha saw the eyes of his sparring partner bulge out from their sockets but once his eyes settled on the rope shining with a blue aura - the source of the binding force became clearer.

"B-Bulma…" Yamcha looked at his girlfriend who had passed out beside him.

"Well, well… It seems like some of your intelligence has paid off. Then again, I very nearly ended up slicing through this girl in half with my rope, you should have warned me that she's not a martial artist…" a rather high-pitched for a man voice made Yamcha tilt and turn his head toward where his assailant must have been. Shaking and twitching, doing his best to try and power through the psychic rope trick, Krillin did the same.

A tall hunk of blue eyes and blond hair appeared from the corner of the house as an entire battalion of soldiers descended onto the small island which Kame House has been located in. Planes lowered from the clouds, opening up and letting out handfuls of soldiers wielding automated weaponry. The Blue Ribbon army was much better equipped and appeared more professional than the Silver Ribbon Army, at least they looked more like a military squad and less than a band of armed thugs.

The supposed leader of the troupe wore a brown military uniform and a red tie, a brown double-layered officer's cap with a blue ribbon logo on top that appeared to be stitched onto something else underneath. It comprised a cross with the red ribbon making the horizontal line and the blue ribbon hanging vertically. The blond man was accompanied by another one, one of much rougher build and wild, red hair. The red-haired man did not look too comfortable in his uniform as he kept scratching at his collar and trying to undo the neck of his uniform whenever his superior was not looking.

"Well… I was operating under suspicions, for the most part. When I found out that the aliens that demolished the Red Ribbon wielded more precise Dragon Radars than ours, I figured it must have been the Capsule Corp that aided them." Ex-Commander Silver declared, looking as proud on the favorable deduction and the supposed use to Commander Blue as he was irritated by the itchy and tight uniform.

"Of course, the grievance of West City against the Red Ribbon over old conflicts, the opportunity of these aliens, common sightings during the World Martial Arts Tournament… I should have found it out earlier… Who is in charge of intelligence in our army?!" the commander yelled out at his platoon that quivered in fear and all pointed at a single, anthropomorphic ram who just gulped and pointed his furry finger at himself.

Commander Blue pulled out his gun and shot the unfortunate soldier on the spot, right in between the eyes. Krillin looked more worked up over the nonchalant execution than the soldiers of the Blue Ribbon Army were.

"Is it wise, executing your own soldiers like that? He might have still been useful despite his failure…" Silver wondered.

"Do not question my orders. If you were any less intelligent and charming, you'd join this buffoon in his fate." Commander Blue glanced back at his new favorite soldier while licking his glossy, pink lips. "You may raise a fine point though, when you first stumbled onto our base, I was ready to shoot you on sight. Though when I saw you in that beaten, half-bare, sweaty state… You should thank your fate that it made me hesitate long enough for you to tell me you could still be of use."

"Eeeek!" Launch burst out of the Kame House, screaming. A handful of soldiers turned their guns at her and a pair of them opened fire, restraining themselves on the last few inches to lift their guns just slightly above the frightened woman. Their orders were not to execute but to capture hostages to be used as bargaining chips.

"L-Launch-san…" Yamcha grunted through the immense pressure of the ropes and the paralysis shine that irradiated from them and seemed to sap all of his strength.

"I was… I was going to tell you there is a dwarf man in the toilet, b-but…" Launch kept weeping while the men caught her and brought her to Commander Blue who looked at the woman, wondering if she might have been useful.

"Tell me, Silver, martial arts aficionado that you are… Is this woman a martial artist too? She seems pathetic and feeble, like all women." Blue stuck out his tongue and spat out some to better accentuate his distaste for the weaker sex.

"No. She is not a martial artist that I have heard of…" Silver shook his head, looking offended at his commander that he was addressed just by his name as if he was nothing more than these prisoners that he had captured with Silver's help, no less.

"I see… We've no use of her then…" Blue extended his gun over her head to shoot but Silver's distressed tone halted the commander from firing the fateful bullet.

"Wait! That thing she said… About dwarfs in the toilet… Let her explain herself, we cannot allow anything to be overlooked with these dangerous folk. They've been working with those aliens, maybe they're fostering more?" Silver explained himself, softening the death-inducing glare that he had earned by daring to speak up and interrupt Commander Blue's precious battlefield execution.

"I see… Maybe you're right… Speak, woman. Do not think to dilly-dally either, if I grow bored or find your story useless, I'll kill you but it will not be by a shot in the face, it will be slow and excruciating, as only I am capable of." Blue ordered but Launch was a total wreck and in no condition to talk.

"Hmph… Women…" Commander Blue cleared his throat before raising his gun once more over the head of the collapsed woman who had her face hidden underneath the locks of curly, blue hair and stuck in the sand at the same time, as if she was trying to avoid the nightmare she just left into.

The bullet that left the barrel of Blue's gun and left it smoking did not hit Launch's temple nor did it kill her, it did hit the sand, although prematurely so, with no contact with anything else but Launch's head of curly, blond hair while the woman swept at the feet of Commander Blue with newly reborn vigor, avoiding death by awakening into her more violent persona, whether by her mouthful of hair or the sand she was nearly drowning in forcing her to sneeze subtly as only a dainty lady such as herself could have.

Not quite overwhelmed by a superior fighter but more so overwhelmed and confused by the vigor and brutality born within the blond bandit, Commander Blue was caught in complete surprise and fumbled over. Yamcha and Krillin felt the tension around their bodies weaken but it was too surprising for them to work with as it did not take any less than half a second to return to full force. Commander Blue raised his head from his flat position and did his best to maintain a steady hold on his bindings. He did so in spite of Launch holding his own pistol over his head with a cocky smirk.

"Yer not offin' me that easily, ya prick!" blond Launch declared while preparing to unload the magazine at Commander Blue but, instead, she found hitting the walls of the Kame House as Silver dashed up to her and disarmed the woman, flipping her over his shoulder and then punching her in the face a pair of times. He was surprised to see that not a drop of blood trickled from the woman's face, implying she was decently tough. Silver's morning routine used to comprise of him knocking out multiple tough soldier types and just local boxers that loved money enough to get in the ring with him.

"What a quim…" Commander Blue cursed, getting onto his knees and then back on both feet, stretching his back out like a string and then glancing down at the woman while his eyes kept up their cerulean shimmer. "Had I not improved my psychic abilities through non-stop training, I'd have lost focus just there… The demise of the Red Ribbon caught us all unprepared but it has also hardened us, did it not, Silver-kun?"

"Silver…kun?" the demeaned officer grunted to himself before letting all the pent up fury out in a wheeze and then nodding in agreement. It was not like what Commander Blue said was completely wrong – he himself also trained tenfold as hard as he did under the Red Ribbon's command just to avoid the fate that befell his superiors and it still caught up to him.

"You two… Go scan the house for any dwarves and shoot them on sight." Commander Blue instructed a random batch of soldiers on his command.

"Ummm… But Sir… They're dwarves, what if they're too small to shoot?" the anthropomorphic dog scratched underneath his floppy ear only to be shot in the face for insubordination.

"General Dark, I'll assume you will take up this task onto your own… Admittedly to broad shoulders?" Commander Blue glanced at a pathetic excuse of a soldier. Fat, possibly short-sighted, if his spectacles were any indication to go by and having a milky stubble of a teenager just fostering their first brush for a few weeks man clapped both of his leather shoes against one another and saluted his Commander.

"Yes, Sir! Move it, you insubordinate dogs, no pun intended, scour through that house, shoot any alien scum on sight, crush them, if you must!" General Dark ordered the soldiers surviving the purge of their commander.

* * *

**Author's Notes: Some of you wondered about how General Blue (Commander Blue in this case :P) has come to catch both Muten Roshi as well as his pupils, well, first of all, I was yet to get to that part, also, we've already seen in Dragon Ball chapter 80 that, given the chance to get a drop on somebody, General Blue has the ability to capture Goku, Krillin, and Muten Roshi at the same time with his psychic ropes. In this case, it is a General Blue with improved mastery over his psychic abilities as well as one that has some assistance from Colonel (or ex-Commander) Silver, so I don't think it is too much of a stretch to assume that someone capable of capturing Roshi, Goku and Krillin could capture Krillin and Yamcha (we'll see about Micro Roshi's fate in the next chapter, won't we?), moreover given that the pair is exhausted after their training.**

**Some might say I'm wanking General Blue, but he IS the final boss of this arc (in case it was not clear at this point :)).**


	28. The Unbreakable Ties That Bind!

Prompted by the order of Commander Blue, as relayed by General Dark, the soldiers kicked the door of the Kame House open and began flooding the house one by one. Anthropomorphic animals and humans alike scoured the house in search of any filthy dwarves that could have threatened the genius plan of the Blue Ribbon Army to hold the daughter and the inheritor of the vast Capsule Corp legacy hostage and squeeze the world out of anything the Blue Ribbon Army pleased just to keep the girl alive.

For a short while, loud instructions and calling signs came from the house. A loud yell signaled the end of the uninterrupted and perfect search, however, as more and more shrieks and screams of soldiers frozen in fear for their lives, taken out by an enemy they could not see filled the house and disturbed the remains of the army outside as well as Commander Blue himself.

"You incompetent buffoons! Must I do everything myself!? Even with my awesome psychic powers I cannot both crush this house and hold these three tied down!" Commander Blue raged when looking at the resulting failure of his soldiers. One of them burst through the window and stayed hanging with his lower body still indoors but the upper part dangling on the outside. "What are you waiting for!? Storm the house!"

"Commander Blue, may I suggest an alternate plan of attack. You will lose too many soldiers this way. Instead of fighting the enemy on their turf, we should strive to have them approach us on ours." Silver tried to reason with the Commander who looked from his reaction to be equally tempted to shoot Silver in the head for daring to suggest his judgment was wrong as he was to listen to the newfound asset and, perhaps, even grant him an official rank in his army.

"Hmph. Very well…" Commander Blue nodded and approached the subdued prisoners. He then rose his gun up and pointed it at the unconscious, blue-haired girl lying on the sand. "You, in the house, come out and face us in the open or we will shoot Bulma. I don't know if your martial artists can take a bullet or not, but I am certain that this girl cannot!"

"You bastard! Holding Bulma hostage like that!" Krillin grunted and sneered at the Commander. Yamcha was just about to warn the little warrior that doing so might not have been too wise, considering how their use to the Commander was almost non-existent at this point and it would have been wiser to not alert the man in charge, fully willing to execute even his own soldiers, to that fact.

Commander Blue kicked Krillin the face without any ceremony to it. He must not have been just a mere psychic, judging from the mark of a red boot gleaming from Krillin's bald head, Yamcha surmised the Commander of the Blue Ribbon army to be quite the martial artist himself. Taking his soldiers on all at once may have been a fair yet doable task but together with this man… Even if there was a way to escape his psychic binds, there must have been a cleverer way to confront him than this.

A laser-like beam of blue light blasted through the door, prompting all of the present soldiers to aim at the door and open fire at the same time. It was not until the vexed Commander ordered his troops to stop firing that the firing ceased and the soldiers were free to witness the smoking barrels of their weaponry and the holed devastation they've caused upon the Kame House.

There was a faint squeak coming from down below. Krillin shrugged and wriggled himself back on his feet and turned at the door, peeking at not the holes that the bullets left of the door but instead the one that the azure laser beam blasted out.

"Yamcha, didn't that beam seem familiar?" Krillin grunted, still feeling the effects of that kick on his numb tongue and loosened teeth.

"Yeah… Like a… Kamehameha but… On a microscopic scale." Yamcha realized.

"The Micro Band!" both martial artists realized just in time to hear a grunt of pain from one of the soldiers as he collapsed due to an unseen peril. The rest started panicking, turning around frantically and pointing their guns at their own comrades, just inches of madness away from opening fire without caring for the risk of gunning down their own colleagues just for a brief chance of hitting the invisible threat taking everyone out.

"You useless nincompoops!" Commander Blue appeared to be losing all traces of sanity and was about to do something rash before a gentle pop snapped the combined forces of the Blue Ribbon Army back to sanity. Silver lifted up a glass that used to hold lemonade on a nearby table and showed something bashing at the glass from the inside. It was only when the area was narrowed down this way that the men found out what they were looking at.

"That is Muten Roshi. A world-famous martial arts master." Silver showed the glass and a feeble-looking yet deceitfully mighty old man attempting to use his greatly diminished micro-strength to escape from captivity. "Had this man been at full size, your men would have fared far worse than they have. Hell, this entire platoon might have gotten taken out."

"If this old geezer is this dangerous, we should kill him." Commander Blue pointed his gun at the glass that Silver held far too close to his own chest for the ex-commander's comfort.

"W-Wait, we don't have a way to kill him. He is one of the most powerful martial artists in the world and we aren't sure why he is in this minimized state. If it is a martial arts technique that is causing this, some attempt at being sneaky, damaging him might undo the technique, which will force us to deal with a fully-grown Muten Roshi. As you've said before, Commander, we are not sure that a bullet would even kill these people." Silver stepped forward in an improvised attempt to avoid the unstable and sadistic Commander Blue firing shots at a glass he held right by his own chest.

"Hmph… I see… Some troublesome troupe those alien scum have gathered around themselves. The West City, hell, even the Central City should all be thankful that we are quenching this coup of theirs to take the spot as the world's top military power!" Commander Blue sneered at the captured old man with contempt, his eyes had something more hidden deep down – respectful fear for the martial artist that made reason overcome his sadism and passion for field executions.

"Indeed. What will we do with all these martial artists? We only need the girl, don't we?" Silver wondered. He did not feel any more comfortable surrounded by people capable of delivering that same sense of dread he felt when that infernal boy and, more so, that teenage girl caused him. With mere flicks of their fingers, just a waggle of their tails the pair could have decimated his entire Silver Ribbon Army… That was true power, the kind that no military could have garnered. Perhaps the other officials were wrong to laugh at Commander White's interest in the Artificial Humans initiative after all?

"I have not the faintest idea." Commander Blue admitted. "I will go public with our accomplishments here now. I am sure that I will figure something out by the time I am done with that. We will have some time to wait for the Dragon Balls to be delivered to us, enough so to figure out what to do with them and how to better dispose of them."

Commander Blue walked away and began conversing with his soldiers and setting the equipment in order for his public debut as the new rogue master of the world to whose whims the entire world bowed to. Just like Commander Red once was…

"Oh… I suppose we've forgotten about you, didn't we?" Silver realized after looking at Launch. This woman was no martial artist and she could have most likely been eliminated through the old and tested method of a bullet through the head. Silver approached the downed woman and searched his person for a gun, finding none. That was right, Commander Blue did not yet entrust him with a gun, just like he had not yet entrusted him with a rank.

The Commanders of the splintered groups of the former Red Ribbon Army were meant to be comrades, though each one blamed the others for not gathering under a single flag after the demise of the Red Ribbon, instead choosing to each form their own squads and look for the Dragon Balls by themselves. All of those cells knew that eventually they'd come into conflict with the other armies for the Dragon Balls but every Commander left that problem for when it would surface. For those few reasons, every one of them was a bit distrustful of the others though this was busting it…

To be honest, Silver would have never approached anyone else for help, let alone Commander Blue, except by the time he gathered that which was shattered by the alien pair back together, Blue was the only option for him. The sadistic bastard dog of the former Red Ribbon with an excellent order fulfillment record and a horrible record of behavior. For all their fancy claims, the Red Ribbon was a military organization of well-armed thugs and most generals, colonels, and sergeants acted like it.

Blue was the only one. The only one forcing his platoons to abide his arbitrary set of rules like "looking nice and orderly" and "not picking one's nose". All of which were executable offenses… Blue bled soldiers left and right even back at the Red Ribbon Army, now when left to his own judgment, Silver could just shiver trying to think of the type of ship that Blue was running. At the very least, it was one that looked neat and orderly, everybody wore their fancy uniforms and held their pinkies up when drinking tea.

Silver spat to the side, his spit landed about a meter away from the subdued woman by his feet. Blue would have riddled him with bullets for such a rude and brutish gesture but this was the truth of what Silver thought of the man's methods.

* * *

"This isn't good… I can't move at all. I gave it my all during training." Krillin chuckled to himself, subjecting to the powerlessness and the absurd of the situation. Usually devoting all of oneself to training would have been a good thing.

"I know…" Yamcha grumbled too, still refusing to give up his struggle for escape. "Now would be the best time to free ourselves. If I had to guess, I'd wager that this Blue guy has a range he can use his abilities on. Surely him talking in front of cameras distracts his focus from us, meaning now is when his focus is the weakest."

"No talking, you two!" a pair of bypassing soldiers kicked Yamcha in the kidneys and Krillin in the back of his head. Even if the concentration of patrolling Blue Ribbon soldiers was the smallest at the moment, they were still patrolling the place as Commander Blue would soon make this island a major point of interest in the eyes of the world.

"Krillin, Yamcha!" a voice rung in the minds of both combatants. The two looked around frantically before realizing that the voice sounded much like that of Muten Roshi, at which point they turned at the dwarfed mentor of theirs who was still detained under a glass of reinforced glass. Possession of a man that had a nasty tendency for smashing their drinking containers.

"Muten Roshi!" Yamcha called back at the old man in his mind, wondering if the old man could hear him if he replied the same manner in which he was addressed.

"What happened, why are you small? Is it because of the Micro-Band?" Krillin asked Muten Roshi.

"The reason why I am small is that band. I tried sneaking into the bathroom to get a peek at Launch-san but she spotted me and freaked out. Things got out of hand and… I think the damned thing's busted. Can't go back to full-size at the moment so I will need you two to do the work for me. Commander Blue is a formidable fighter but the two of you should be able to defeat him, even with the reinforcement of his men behind him." Muten Roshi explained. The way he spoke suggested Yamcha that Krillin addressed the man mentally but Yamcha could not hear Krillin's thoughts, only Roshi's reply, which meant that Roshi had to reply to questions in full-sentences to provide context to the other as to what was asked of him.

"I know, Muten Roshi-san, but we can't move!" Yamcha complained. "We're too worn out and those psychic binds are too strong."

"These binds seem unbreakable because you two are trying to force your way out. Psychic powers are a lot like martial arts techniques, in fact, they're a different branch of martial arts altogether. By focusing your Ki, you can augment your mind, instead of your body to break out. Given how powerful Blue is, it will be difficult but now is your only chance." Muten Roshi explained.

"It's just like what you taught us about Ki techniques…" Krillin muttered out loud to himself. A soldier standing around by the corner of the Kame House was about to kick the boy but his partner stopped him.

"Come on, the little guy's just praying. Look at his bald head and the markings on his forehead, must be some kind of a monk or something…" the man and an anthropomorphic tiger laughed in unison, the tiger seemed so enthralled by the hilarity of the situation that he dropped the smoke he held in his mouth.

"That's right. The concept is similar except you should not concern yourself with the body, instead, focus on your mind!" Muten Roshi tried to ease the augmentation process for his pupils.

Krillin hopped back on his feet, still bound by the ropes that continued to shimmer blue. The renewed vitality of the young man made the scraps of patrolling troops quite interested in what the heck the pint-sized baldy was up to. They all approached the tiny martial artist, pointing their guns and threatening him to stop whatever activities he was up to.

"If you are planning on filling your pants, I'll drop you, I'm warning you!" an anthropomorphic dog pointed out while taking careful aim at Krillin.

"That won't help his bowel at all… In fact, you're just terrifying him further…" his human brother in arms pointed out, getting distracted for a brief moment to point out the flaw in his colleague's thinking.

"You fools!" Silver appeared from behind the Kame House, pointing at Krillin who was beginning to emit a faint, bright blue aura of his own. "He's trying to break out of Commander Blue's bindings. Shoot him at once!"

Had they tried, they'd have likely done so, Krillin appeared to struggle with the task far more than he had initially planned to. "B-But… Commander Blue hasn't given us the order yet. If he doesn't want these two dead by the time he's done… We'll be the ones getting shot," a soldier amongst the flock objected.

"What are you doing, Krillin? Should have stayed down!" Yamcha yelled out at his friend. He himself was doing his best to try and augment his mind to the point where he could overpower the psychic paralysis that his body was overcome by while his body busted the ropes, however, he was doing it prone, doing his best to remain inconspicuous.

"I… Might need the… Added tension… For motivation!" Krillin ground his teeth while his entire body turned red to the point where it almost seemed he would flip his insides outward like his blood was about to burst through his pores.

"You fools! These two are too dangerous to be allowed to break out!" Silver objected, dashing to one of the soldiers and delivering a wicked cross to their jaw, knocking the anthropomorphic fox out with a single hit while grabbing his handgun and pointing it at Krillin. A pair of thunderous bangs later, two bullets to the head sent the pint-sized warrior to the ground.

Yamcha's eyes shook in terror, his resolve in overcoming the psychic paralysis has become shaken by the apparent end of his friend but Krillin just twitched on the ground, surprising the lot of the soldiers and even Silver himself. The tiny baldy began writhing on the floor, still bound tightly by the psychic ropes.

"T-These guys are… Monsters…" one of the soldiers took a step back, shaken by Krillin's survival of a pair of lead knocks to the head much more than Yamcha was shocked by the ruthless would-be execution of his training partner.

"N-No… Somebody with a bigger gun… Everybody direct your fire at them, now!" Silver roared out but Krillin's headbutt to the jaw knocked the ex-Commander of the Silver Ribbon Army flat on his back while Krillin flipped back and landed firmly on his feet with a nasty smirk on his head and a nasty pair of bruises where the bullets hit him in the head.

"K-Krillin…" Yamcha exclaimed before realizing something that had just dawned to the boy as well – they did not need their arms for movement. Krillin sprung around like a worm on crack, headbutting everyone he found to be in his way.

Launch writhed on the ground as well. The blonde rubbed her nose at the sand and her hair as if trying to remove it from her face altogether. Yamcha hunched his body over and stood up on his feet, still tied but willing to assist Krillin in his springing barrage of headbutt takedowns. Standing up might not have been the brightest idea was bullets were buzzing all over the place.

"What are you doing, Launch-san?" Yamcha wondered. "You'll hurt yourself."

"Damn it, the other me has a bust of 82 cm. whereas I have a bust of 83 cm. I only I could change…" she yelled out to try and overpower the gunfire noises. Yamcha took off and tackled a pair of soldiers to the ground with his shoulders and his back, not willing to test the mettle of the thickness of his head like Krillin was doing.

"What are you waiting then?" he prompted. "You could slip out from those binds if you transformed!"

"Do you think I don't know that, genius!?" Bad Launch growled back at Yamcha hard enough to make the man flinch. He did not have the best toughness when standing up to women, to begin with, and this one had a particularly nasty temper. "I can't do it on prompt, dammit!"

"What is the meaning of this racket!?" Commander Blue appeared from his portable broadcasting studio, surrounded by his personal troops in black uniforms and red ties. It was one of the cases where the uniforms of the lackeys looked far cooler than that of their commander.

"Shit!" Yamcha widened his eyes out, caught with his figurative pants down by an enemy he'd have trouble keeping up with even while free. It was at that point that the man heard a cracking noise and turned for the glass underneath of which Muten Roshi was stored. Tiny as he was… Muten Roshi was free.

* * *

_**Author's Notes: Okay, so I've taken a few artistic liberties here. The whole bit with Launch's bust size changing is completely made up, although, I thought of the idea of being hilarious enough to warrant a mention. I think that given how it did not amount to all that much and did not bail out the Dragon Team this time, it wouldn't be all that bad** of** a retcon given how it does not directly contradict any sources I am aware of. I also found the gag of her not being able to transform on her whim a bit funny, given how the sudden and unexpected transformation was the only thing her character was used for in the series. I also tried expanding a little bit on the lore about how Psychic Powers that characters like General Blue, Frieza and Chiaotzu could use worked compared to the usual martial arts techniques. Though it somehow seemed like using the method of overcoming them that, while being foreshadowed in the earlier chapter, was only explained to the pair at the moment seemed a bit cheap so I had to resort to the gag-fest that earlier DB was known for leading up to the cliffhanger. **_

_**I find the powerful fighters being involved in a myriad of bad luck coincidences that result in them struggling with opponents they'd undoubtedly overcome a very fitting story-telling mechanic for any DB story so that's what I tried to go for. **_

_**P.S. Yeah, that's right, chapters of both Tales of a Ninja Magician and Paradise Lost on the same day as an apology for my unexpected vacation ;)**_


	29. Two Destinations - One Goal!

"Damn, our chance's blown…" Yamcha thought to himself. Now that Commander Blue had finished his broadcast and could focus his attention on his captives, any chances of overcoming his psychic technique would have been completely tossed out the window.

"Bouncing around like fleas…" Commander Blue ground his teeth with his fists clenched beside him. The cerulean aura emanating around the man intensified to the point where it was almost impossible to miss, there was nothing spiritual and subtle about it. The psychic energy was raging, blazing around the man. "Pretty inventive, should have dispatched of you sooner…"

A flash of bright light coming from a hair-thin beam made Commander Blue drop his concentration for a moment, blinding him but also overwhelming his upper body as the miniaturized version of Muten Roshi's Kamehameha wave hit him head-on. Had it not been cast on such a reduced scale, it might have settled the battle then and there. All it did now was send the man down, his head thrown back as if a bullet had just hit his forehead. A motion so sudden and violent that it would have snapped the neck of any weaker man outright.

"Now, Krillin!" Yamcha looked at his sparring partner who had a pair of bleeding bruises over his head where the bullets had hit him earlier. Both blooming martial artists concentrated their Ki on prompt. Yamcha had never felt quite this strong before, it was like every tiniest cell in his body had blossomed with all of its inherent potential, keeping nothing back and producing every tiniest droplet of energy that it could have. It was of no use, it was like the taxation on his own body merely damaged his arms and legs that desperately tried to break the unbreakable bindings.

A thunderous snap made Yamcha cease his efforts and look to his side at his friend, shock and great pride in his friend's abilities and progress took over the Sisyphean labor of breaking out of Commander Blue's psychic binds. Krillin appeared far more capable in the area of combating psychic powers than Yamcha as telegraphed by the pint-sized martial artist dropping the demolished into tiny strings ropes beside him and checking his wristbands, letting the general feel of his muscles return to his body before he proceeded to beat Commander Blue down for his transgressions before him and his friends.

"Don't keep me waiting too long, Yamcha," Krillin muttered with a serious tone. "That's one dirty bastard we're facing and I might need some aid."

"Don't get all cool on me now, Krillin, we're merely even now. I've picked up the Kamehameha faster, remember?" Yamcha answered Krillin's call with a cool remark of his own while he closed his eyes and prepared to try again.

"Y-You…" Commander Blue was shaking in fury before he even raised his head off the ground. The Mini Kamehameha that Muten Roshi had used against him had messed up the man's hair, tore his military hat to shreds, busted a few teeth, landed a few busted veins around Blue's bloodshot eyes and messed up the collar of his shirt. "My face… You've damaged my face!"

"C-Calm down, Commander, don't lose your… Cool!" another masculine boom thundered from the other side of the beach while Silver rose to his feet, clutching at his dislocated jaw. The thick and bony surface had risen far higher up than it was normal, resulting in a rather disturbing appearance of a rounder face emphasized by a bony lump that had almost disfigured the ex-Commander's face. Krillin had done a number on this military official with just one headbutt, that made Yamcha believe that they should not have surrendered hope just yet.

Blue's eyes shimmered with blue once more. Krillin tightened his entire body, prepared himself for a paralyzing offensive but as he prepared to do his best and counter Blue's paralysis, he realized that he was not the intended target. That disturbed the fledgling martial artist, making his eyes shift around the battlefield for potential targets but he could find none.

That was when a boom of a firearm going off cut the silence like the blade of a ruthless manslayer. Silver's eyes widened in a wild expression of pain before the man collapsed on his back, his body completely shutting off mere moments after it had been crippled by a paralyzing gleam of Blue's eyes.

"Don't presume to be able to speak to me with a tone like that, you ugly bastard. The Blue Ribbon Army has no tolerance for ugliness." Commander Blue muttered to himself, so mad that he still used a controlled tone as if he still had any control over the situation. The recovered commander took a fighting stance, prepared to attack Krillin now but a loud thud disrupted the upcoming heated battle. Blue looked around, searching for the source of this noise but a cascade of follow-up thuds assisted him in that venture.

His soldiers were dropping like flies all around him. They weren't injured, nothing on them suggested that they were attacked in any way and their expressions seemed so… Peaceful… As if they just… Succumbed to deep, hypnotic sleep in a blink of an eye.

"That must be… Roshi-san's technique!" Yamcha looked around, trying to locate where his miniature mentor may have been casting his technique from. "Nice work, Roshi-san!"

Blue's eyelids started faltering, it was as if the man felt heaviness over his own consciousness as well, the draw of gravity pulled every harder yet never seemed more graceful and loving than in that moment. It would soon become too difficult to combat this unusual martial arts technique from where Blue was standing and the commander had undoubtedly realized that. Yamcha felt the psychic grip around his bindings completely fade away, detached his ropes fell to the floor, devoid of any supernatural vigor and clinginess they'd just displayed.

"Alright, punk, you're through!" Yamcha entered his Wolf Fang Fist stance but a shimmer of cold, cerulean stars in the eyes of Commander Blue made the martial artists halt in their pressure of offensive.

"Y-You… J-Just try to attack me, see what happens to your precious Bulma now!" Commander Blue threatened the martial artists that were getting closer to their victory over the Blue Ribbon Army with each passing second. Something suggested to all three martial artists that this was no vague threat.

"Oy, where do you think you're going!?" Launch's rude yell interrupted Commander Blue who had turned away with heavy and sinking muscles and began creeping back into his studio. She aimed a submachine gun she had picked up from the ground and was dangerously close to firing before Yamcha blitzed up to her and gently lowered the barrel of her gun to aim to the sandy floor of the beach instead of the man that had a scary ace up his sleeve that none of the martial artists could yet quite put a finger on.

Within seconds, Commander Blue emerged from his studio shirtless, having ditched the tattered on the upper body uniform and holding Bulma over his left shoulder. While the commander of the Blue Ribbons should have had little problem in handling a subdued and tied up young woman over his shoulder, his current, sleepy state made him struggle with the venture to a tremendous extent.

"I'd… Not get in my way… If I were you…" Commander Blue muttered with pauses for momentary snoozes that very nearly claimed him with the strain of each completed sentence. In between a couple of random sentences, the man had to yawn and smack his own cheeks to dismiss the sleep that was about to claim him even though Muten Roshi must have ceased his hypnotic technique already.

It was the sight of Bulma that reassured the martial artists that their approach of halting their attack was the right one – the poor girl was no longer unconscious but instead her eyes were bulged out wide and she was wriggling like a worm with her skin pale as snow and in the process of turning azure – she was choking up despite not having her airways restricted in any way.

"That's right… You dirty worms… I have restricted her pathways with my psychic powers… Unless I cancel my technique, she'll choke up for good… I'd make sure that nothing gets in the way of my escape if I were you…" Commander Blue managed to slip in a grin while he slurred and staggered to the nearest submarine and slumped Bulma over it. He was in a rush, likely realizing quite well that a normal girl had a very poor lung capacity compared to a battle-hardened martial artist. It barely took any time at all for the submarine to start and blast off into the horizon, Bulma still onboard.

"Damn that bastard!" Yamcha clutched his fist in front of him and ground his teeth. "He just had to make it personal… Hold on, Bulma, I'm gonna come after you!"

Krillin looked at the horizon and the rising wave of water that came from when Blue's submarine had submerged underwater for a couple of seconds with a determined glare but then turned his attention at Muten Roshi, it took the boy a couple of seconds to even find his mentor who was dangling his feet and resting on a nearby pile of sleeping soldiers. Roshi was gesticulating with his hands but Krillin had little to no way of understanding what it was that his miniaturized mentor was trying to say.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, don't rush off after the enemy recklessly!" Roshi spoke to Krillin and Yamcha mentally at the same time. "The enemy has revealed a frightening technique to us and Blue has his hands on Bulma as well, meaning that at any time he can just threaten her life and escape once more. Pursuing Blue now will require a better plan than just rushing ahead."

"But, Roshi-san!" Yamcha objected, yelling out loud. "Commander Blue has kidnapped Bulma, I can't just sit around doing nothing while my girlfriend is in his hands, Bulma would never forgive me that!"

"He has a point there, Bulma can hold a grudge…" Krillin squinted his eyes. "His hands are sort of tied… Get it?"

"This is no time for jokes, Krillin, what if Commander Blue uses his breathtaking psychic technique on one of you? Are you two sure you can break out of it? You've struggled greatly to break out of a far inferior in power psychic technique… You two might be Blue's superiors in terms of combat but he can kill you with just an intense stare, you're outmatched. It is best if you wait for Chayote and Goku, they are after the Ribbons themselves, it is only a matter of time before they go after Commander Blue and rescue Bulma. They may be even bigger blockheads than you two but they have an unnatural level of Saiyan toughness that might just pull them through." Roshi warned the pair of his students.

"I'm sorry, Roshi-san, but I cannot do that." Yamcha shook his head and looked on ahead. "If there are any who seek to terrorize me, Bulma or anyone else decent with undeserved power, I must strive to defeat such people with one mighty blast! That's what you taught us martial arts mean so this is something I have to do as a martial artist."

Without waiting for a reply or words for validation, Yamcha tread onward and leaped into the nearest submarine, running through its panels and buttons with an almost casual mastery over its controls. The man just stopped for a brief moment to glare at Krillin with curiosity in his eyes.

"Are you coming or not?" he wondered. Krillin took one mighty leap and covered the distance between himself and the submarine with the grace that seemed almost effortless. With a mighty roar of the engine and a booming blast of the blazes coming from the exhaust, the submarine darted off to the ends of the horizon and went down under to follow wherever Commander Blue had gone.

* * *

"Old-timer!" Goku yelled out while flipping over the air and landing onto the soft sand with both his feet. Despite his fancy moves, there was little of his usual goofy mood in Goku's eyes or his mind. He was ready to go from the very first moments. The eyes of the infuriated Saiyan shifted around the island, tracking the signs of engagement all over such as the riddled with holes Kame House, dozens of footsteps all over the sand and entire platoons of leftover military gear.

That was what Chayote was most invested in. The young woman let the Dark Kinto take her all over the various military-grade vehicles left by the army while she tried to determine their worth for the goal of building a fine spacecraft vehicle.

"Huh? What's that?" Goku returned to his usual, contained self all of a sudden, making Chayote focus her attention back at the boy, she was beginning to like how focused and aggressive Son Goku had become all of a sudden and in a snap of fingers it was all gone.

"I said that the Blue Ribbon Army attacked us. We have managed to repel them but Commander Blue escaped with Bulma. Yamcha and Krillin gave him chase." Chayote heard mental signals in the back of her mind, ones that rung with Muten Roshi's disembodied voice. By now she was somewhat used to the experience, given how he interacted with her that way during the World Martial Arts tournament.

"Really? Yamcha and Krillin took those guys down? That's amazing!" Goku crouched forward with his fists by his sides, looking hyped about the possibility of witnessing the growth of his friends and perhaps being challenged by them in a way he's not been challenged before. He was in for a rude awakening, Chayote felt. After the beating she gave him, Goku would never again be challenged by anyone from this planet and that was just one measly training session. After a world of hurt, Son Goku would turn into a great asset for Lord Frieza and the Saiyan military force.

"Nevermind that, where are you, old man?" Chayote hopped off of her cloud and wondered, looking around the island and playing with her hair. She felt a slight bump in her chest. A glance down revealed that Muten Roshi had clutched her chest and held tightly to it like a ledge of a treacherous mountain, the analogy was apt given the size of the old martial arts master and Chayote's bosom. A puny eruption of her aura sent Roshi flying with cheeks of blood-red like the liquid pouring out of his nose. Perhaps it was for the best that the old pervert was reduced to the size of an insect.

"Hm? Wow, how did you get this small?" Goku yelled out in surprise before leaning over the fallen martial arts master and poking him with a small stick he picked up from nearby. One of plenty torn off with the violent force of the rushing propellers from the army vehicles used in the takeover of Muten Roshi's island.

"Who cares, where's Blue?" Chayote objected to Goku focusing on trivialities. If the Blue Ribbon had accidentally stepped on the old pervert, the universe would have hardly lost anything virtuous and worthy of existence. Recalling how the attendant of the Gods, Whis, had judged Earth's value the Saiyan could not help but wonder perhaps it was because of the fact that the planet's mightiest protector and ally was a dirty old man that the value of this planet was so insignificant.

"It was Bulma's Micro-Band. It must have malfunctioned after Launch-san flushed me by accident and now I'm small. No worries though, I'm sure Bulma will fix me when someone brings her back." Muten Roshi informed both Saiyans mentally before proceeding to the far more important part. "I've no idea where they are. Maybe one of these submarines can trace the others with its radar function but there aren't all that many islands around these parts – just an Archipelago to the west, an abandoned steam fortress to the south-east… Penguin Island is the only meaningful settlement in miles."

"It is likely that the enemy will be seeking a better and untraceable meaning of transportation." Chayote nodded, affirming her own assumption. "For that Blue will require to visit a Capsule Shop. If what Muten Roshi is saying is true, then Penguin Island will be the only place with a Capsule Shop."

"Hmm… You could hop into one of these submaroos and check out where Blue is, can't you?" Goku pointed at one of the abandoned "submaroos" of the Blue Ribbon Army.

"Submarines…" Chayote fixed it. She may not have been a genius but at least she could name the military weapon of the local intelligent species of the planet after hearing its name. "Also… I could, but then we would be too far behind to catch Blue. Have in mind that he left with one of these submarines before us. Even Yamcha and Krillin must be long gone by now. We'd arrive too late that way. I cannot risk any harm befalling Bulma, she is my only hope to get off this rock of a planet."

"Teehee…" Goku smirked with an apish grimace and gave Chayote a nasty facial gesture. "You don't know how to work any of the submaroos, do you?"

"Shut up and follow me!" Chayote yelled back at the boy, taking it to the skies with one mighty leap and letting the Dark Kinto catch her mid-fall. Still chuckling and clutching at his tummy, Goku followed. It was not long before the focus and the need to kick Commander Blue's ass once again graced the eyes of the childish Saiyan. It was not a moment too soon for Chayote was about to bring up the useless bonds of kinship he felt with his Earthling pets just to quench this spirit of buffoonery that defined Goku at times.

"Oh, by the way, I wouldn't count on Bulma fixing you, old man." Chayote turned back to look at the Kame House and Muten Roshi, who was still hanging around there somewhere, "I wouldn't fix the state of a filthy old geezer that fondles breasts instead of brushing up on his martial arts, getting his students and innocent Earthlings into this sort of predicament, to begin with. Seems a fitting punishment for you."

"That's a bit harsh…" Goku pouted right before the two flying clouds took off and spiraled across the oceans, heading straight for the Penguin Island based solely on the vague directions provided by Muten Roshi. Perhaps Goku might have brought him along but he was too dull to realize it and Chayote wanted exactly none of the old man's chicanery in her presence, plus, as a tiny, bothersome dwarf, the geezer would just get in the way in any case…


	30. Octopus' Reach

"I can't even see them… We should have hurried up instead of delivering inspiring speeches…" Krillin squinted with his hand over his eyes, doing his best to focus on the horizon. "He's probably submerged by now anyway."

"Don't worry," Yamcha replied with calculated aggression to his tone. "He's not getting away far. We're in the same kind of submarine he is, that means our radar can track it."

As a testament to his prophetic declaration the man that used to once put bread onto his table from being a desert bandit robbing people of precious capsules and money turned the radar on. One did not spend time stealing and selling capsules without having to evaluate what the stolen junk was worth and one could not evaluate anything without knowing a thing or two about it. Yamcha was nowhere near in the same league at driving or working with tech like his girlfriend but he sure as hell knew his way around a submarine, even a military-grade one.

"Wow, look at that!" Krillin pointed at the bleep on the radar. "You were right, he's a good 8 kilometers away. And we're closing in fast."

"That's because he's not moving anymore, otherwise our speed should have been the same." Yamcha noted with the first hint of worry in his eyes ever since he settled on tracking a commander of his own military force which was a spinoff of the most dangerous military force on Earth.

"Is he hiding? What is he, an idiot?" Krillin wondered. The boy was an astounding martial arts prodigy, sure to surpass Muten Roshi in his prime but… Sometimes he got a bit carried away and trusted his abilities a bit too much, the other half of the time he just underestimated his opponents. What a far cry from the terrified boy back in the World's Martial Arts Tournament. The opening of his eyes to his true strength might have served Krillin a bit ill.

"No. He might have stopped to let us catch up to him." Yamcha expressed his worst worries. Even if that meant getting to Bulma faster, he did not like the fact that his opponent was so eager to engage his pursuers.

"Why would he do that?" Krillin rubbed his bald head, his head let out a rubbery squeak upon contact with the tips of his fingers.

"Because he is confident he can beat us. Because he wants to get rid of his tail. Because he can see us on his radar the same way we can see him. Because he will fight us on a battlefield of his own choosing. Just pick one…" Yamcha got more and more frustrated with each reason he provided. Rushing ahead was anything but intelligent. Muten Roshi was right, Goku and Chayote must have been on their way, wherever they were, they could not have missed that message to the world, could they? Still, Bulma just had that kind of effect on him. Whenever she was involved, Yamcha became stronger, no longer afraid of girls anymore, but also kind of a love-struck idiot.

Krillin gulped with the fear that he inhibited back in World Martial Arts Tournament returning to his face. Regardless, he did not request that Yamcha turned back or try to reason with him as Muten Roshi did. He did not express disagreement when Yamcha accelerated the submarine or submerged underwater, where Commander Blue was waiting for them.

"Underwater? Why would he try to take us on underwater?" Krillin blinked a couple of times. "He won't be able to use his psychic abilities without seeing us in the darkness of the abyss, plus, he won't be fighting us with martial arts but engaging us in an underwater dogfight… How good are your submarine skills?"

"Decent." Yamcha confirmed. "Still up in the air if they're better than those of a commander of his own army."

"Hey, he's a commander, not an officer. Commanders have grunts do their work for them and Blue hit me as the off-hands, sissy kind of type anyway…" Krillin joked with a smirk. It was humor meant as a shield of defiance in front of frightening odds. So deep underwater their odds for surviving a failed submarine dogfight would have been slim, the pressure must have been insane and they'd likely have drowned long before coming up to the surface.

"Look at that…" Yamcha pointed his fingers at something his illuminators showed him – a wreckage of a submarine stuck in a pile of rocks. "Shit… Bulma!"

"He really is an idiot…" Krillin chuckled. "He must have fallen asleep behind the wheel and crashed the sub into this rock. What is this place anyway?"

"Hold on, I can see some bubbles gathering around the place, there must be air on the other side, I'm going to have to push the sub inside and then see what he crashed into." Yamcha informed his ally before gently ramming into Blue's submarine. He did not pack any speed behind it whatsoever, placing his front by the rear of the other submarine and accelerating subtly from that point on, just letting the stuck submarine power through the layer of stone and into whatever laid on the other side.

The roaring waters spat both oceans out into some rocky formation that almost looked like a cave of sorts. It had a single stage-shaped rocky stand and was surrounded by rocky surfaces from each side. The bump was significant enough to rob both martial artists of their attentions to anything else but once they used their allotted time for recovery, Krillin pointed at a point of the underwater cave that was filling up with water and beginning to fall apart after two submarines forced their way in.

"Look, what's all of that glitter?" Krillin yelled out, doing his best to overpower the rumbling and the thuds of the falling stone as well as the frequent splashes and the noises of intense showers of the flooding water.

"It's… Gold?" Yamcha exclaimed, knowing full-well of that illustrious shine as an ex-desert-bandit.

"There he is!" Krillin pointed at a half-naked man staring at the fallen submarines with a death-inducing stare that was just waiting to choke a pair of persistent martial artists with his mind. "Are you ready? What's our plan?"

"I'm coming, Bulma!" Yamcha yelled out, using the eject button to have the submarine encase him in a pressure-proof glass pod and spit him out into the air, because the underwater cave was just now filling up with water and barely done getting submerged halfway, the pod flew up and smashed against the rocky ceiling of the cave, letting Yamcha land right in front of the enemy with a furious stare to match that of Blue's and in an effective shower of glass that reflected the faint golden glitter all around the cave.

"Dammit, Yamcha, that's not a viable answer to that question…" Krillin shook his head before busting the submarine front illuminator open and swimming out. Choosing a subtler point of entry by climbing up the central rock from the side. As the rocks crumbled and broke off from the ceiling, it sent more and more gold tumbling down, suggesting that even the surface of the central stage was drowning in gold and jewelry and somebody's booty. "This has got to be the place where the ancient pirate treasure is hidden… Just our luck, I could never find it when I tried looking for it under the guise of training my body but Blue just happened to crash right into it…"

"Bulma! What did you do to her!?" Yamcha clutched his fists, directing his fury at Commander Blue. The girl laid by Blue's feet unconscious. The man had a black-eye on his left side, that stroke the martial artist as odd as he could not recall punching the man there or that he would have ever gotten hit in that area.

"I released her from my psychic technique, by accident at first when I fell asleep behind the wheel. The wretched thing drove us off into this cave by fighting me. Ruined my perfect face!" Commander Blue flipped out by taking an aggressive fighting stance and losing his composure completely.

"Bulma does pack a wicked elbow strike…" Yamcha replied with a smirk, taking a position that setup his Wolf Fang Fist. If he recalled Muten Roshi's lessons, a defensive stance was the wrong answer to an all-out offensive, unless one was a vastly superior martial artist or had an insane power and speed advantage over the opponent. The defensive stance would have always gotten overpowered by the relentless aggression, therefore, a matching response was always the most suitable reply to an all-out offensive attack.

"I'm done with the stupid bargaining plan!" Commander Blue declared. "The moment I dispose of you two, I'm going to choke the life out of her and return to base. Then, after recovering the gold in this place, I will once again embark on the quest for the Dragon Balls!"

Blue attacked without much warning. Yamcha lunged back at the Commander, throwing a wild flurry of fists, completely ignoring the opponent's attacks. The connected strikes stunned and dulled Blue's attacks, the flinching from the successful Wolf Fang Fist canceled the all-out offensive out, sending Blue crashing back into the rocky walls of the cave and then plummeting down into the golden waters below the rocky platform. Yamcha ran up to Bulma the first moment he got.

"Bulma, Bulma, wake up! Are you okay?" he yelled out, doing his best to overpower the noises of the collapsing cave.

"Phew… Who knew that getting ejected and crashing your pod into the ceiling was the right call? Climbing wet rocks sucks!" Krillin fell on his back shortly after climbing up the rocky platform successfully.

"H-Huh… Yamcha?" Bulma blinked a couple of times before smacking her boyfriend across his cheek, sending her savior tumbling off of her with a red mark shaped like a woman's hand across his right left cheek. "Where were you!? I had to fend off for myself! What kind of boyfriend leaves his fragile and stunning lady to fight his battles all by herself!?"

"S-Sorry, Bulma, I chased after him the first moment I got. We didn't even wait for Goku or anything like that…" Yamcha tried excusing himself but Bulma's death-inducing stare triumphed over all the other stares flung that day in its sharpness and toxicity.

"Can we just get out of here, you guys can argue back at the Kame House… Damn… All those soldiers are still asleep there, we'll have to clean them out too…" Krillin sighed, he was already plenty exhausted after the noon training and before the Blue Ribbon Army attacked. Despite not being the one that had to fight Commander Blue or the one to have to deal with his toxic relationship, Krillin looked the most miserable out of everyone in that cave.

The drained eyes of the pint-sized martial artist cracked wider than his dropped jaw. Yamcha and Bulma who were still somewhere in between yelling each other's ears off and smothering each other could not notice the boy's despair until his voice finally broke out in a cracking whimper. Had it not been for Krillin's shaking hands and twitching index finger pointing in the distance, the pair would not have noticed the source of his anguish.

The pair turned their eyes to the northern edge of the cave, noticing a topless man of an athletic build and blond hair floating above the flooding water, surrounded by blue gleam and grinding his teeth with eyes that spit hellfire.

"Burying such a cute gentleman, fit for service in my corps will be such a pity. Regardless, it is that which defined a leader – the ability to make the tough calls." Blue declared with the strictness of an iron razor separated from a sensitive vein only by a delicate layer of skin.

The commander extended his hands, the cerulean shimmer around his body faded away, dropping the man to the rocky platform while the shine and glitter moved on to the falling rocks that threatened to bury down the entire cave area. The rocks that at first appeared to have been directed by gravity now spiraled out of control towards the distraught pair and their friend.

"Bulma!" Yamcha yelled out, covering his girlfriend with his own body while Krillin took a dash up to evade the rocks. The boy's eyes did not fail to register the fact that his friend was too worried about protecting Bulma to evade the telekinetically altered rock falling trajectory as Krillin did.

"Ka!" Krillin shouted out, cupping his hands to his side. "Me!"

"Don't think you'll be getting away!" Blue hissed, squatting his body down and raising his hands out while his eyes focused on the air-bound boy. Krillin's eyes widened while he froze in mid-air, clutching at his throat. There was a fundamental flaw to Blue's technique, the commander had strengthened the might of his psychic abilities, however, the techniques he used did not come naturally to him, they demanded the entirety of his focus. It was not something that Krillin and Yamcha could have exploited at that moment as Krillin was choking up in mid-air, all of his channeled Ki beginning to scatter back from where it came from and Yamcha was still taking the brunt of Blue's psychic rock-fall rampage from before.

It was neither Krillin nor Yamcha that exploited the flaw in Blue's psychic techniques, although both of them had noticed it and had it in their minds, it was the creeping tentacle shaped limb that ascended from the golden depths of an ancient mollusk awakened by all this ruckus. Using its soft body to squeeze through all the nooks and crannies of the fallen rocks and emerging in the treasure room from the abyss. By the time the tentacle wrapped around Blue's body and lifted the commander up in the air, adamant about dragging him under, the malicious military official just wheezed out the air that left his chest and grumbled in shock.

Yamcha burst forth from underneath the rock, dirtied and missing a few teeth but toughened by Muten Roshi's training and ready to provide his friend with one final push of encouragement.

"Do it, Krillin!" he yelled out while he wiped the stone crumbles from around him and cradled the shaking Bulma in his arms.

"Ha-Me… Ha!" Krillin completed his technique, blasting it at the gigantic octopus emerging from the depths and dragging it back down under from where it came. It was not easy to realize that an opponent as tough as Blue would not have gotten done-in by a Kamehameha wave for which the channeled Ki was almost halfway squandered.

The mollusk disappeared deep into the golden depths. With his body freed from the psychic technique, at last, Krillin fell flat on his face but peeled his bald head off the ground and rushed to Yamcha who helped Bulma up as well and the trio ran to the pair of busted submarines, praying to whatever was listening that either of the two vehicles was still working.

"It's no use!" Yamcha yelled into the microphone of the submarine that he had ejected from in a pod. "This one's got only one half of its cockpit functioning and even that one half's cracked. "It was not meant to be used after ejection."

"Heh, I knew my choice of leaving it was the right one." Krillin squinted at his pal while the flooding water threatened to squish both submarines to the ceiling of the underwater cave, with the level of water having recently filled above the central rocky platform and at last consuming all of the gold and jewels.

"Not the time, Krillin…" Yamcha scolded his friend.

"This one's mostly working but… The hull's damaged from the initial impact breaching the cave, I'm not sure it can handle the process of emerging." Bulma worked through the electronics of Blue's submarine trying to determine the degree of damage before the group was forced to make a choice between the two subs.

"It doesn't matter, it's a long shot against certain death!" Yamcha grumbled, unbuckling from the submarine he arrived in and jumping out of it, followed by Krillin shortly behind him. Before the two could jump to the other submarine, however, the baldy glared at the water.

"Are you sure that octopus thing is done for? I can't see it down there…" he quivered.

"You were the one who blasted it. In any case, with any luck, he got knocked out and dragged Blue down under. I don't think Blue can work his way out of the grip of an already unconscious enemy with those shiny eyes of his…" Yamcha shrugged. "Right now we've got no time to sit here and think, we've got to act."

"Alright." Krillin nodded, leaping over to the submarine under Bulma's control and buckling himself in. "Huh?" he turned back at Yamcha only noticing the martial artist taking a plunge underwater.

"What's he doing!?" Krillin paled out. "I didn't mean for him to go down under and check if Blue's really dead!"

"It doesn't matter, we don't have much time to wait for him!" Bulma started the engines. "This sub's busted up as it is."

"What are you talking about?! He saved your life, he shielded you from those rocks!" Krillin objected.

"Don't you think I know that!? He's a tough guy, he might just survive this…" Bulma argued back, although she did not move an inch from where the ship was approaching the cave ceiling at an alarming rate.

"I don't think even someone's as tough as Yamcha could survive a cave-in such as this one. Even if the rocks don't kill him, even the toughest guys can only survive so long underwater…" Krillin shook his head, unbuckling himself and peeking over the edge into the depths that were beginning to drown out the alluring, golden glow.

A wild and unexpected splash sent Krillin tumbling back and all over Bulma's face. The annoyed girl elbowed at the top of the boy's head and pushed him back. It was not Blue emerging from the depths with a burning passion to kill, it was Yamcha, clutching an orange crystal orb with three red stars in a triangle formation on the orb.

"A Dragon Ball!?" Bulma's jaw dropped.

"I thought I saw a familiar glow…" Yamcha wiped his itchy nose looking proud of himself.

"So that's a Dragon Ball…" Krillin pointed at the orb, rolling it around in Yamcha's hand before Bulma got serious and closed the hatch shut, sending the submarine into a spiraling down to the depths. Once the lights of the submarine activated, the golden gleam from the sunken treasure made everyone onboard cover their faces. The submarine jerked in a violent manner, throwing all passengers about.

"Bulma!" Krillin complained.

"It's not me! For whatever reason, we're not moving… Maybe a rock fell on top of us?" Bulma tried pulling some switches and going through a few buttons but nothing worked. A few of the boosters were dead from the initial damage that the submarine suffered after the crash.

"Look at that suction cup! It's the giant octopus again!" Krillin pointed at the pink sucker pressing at the hull.

"Tsk. What a persistent bastard, can't it just eat that Blue bastard and be done with it?" Bulma yelled out and slammed her fist onto a large button at her right side, activating the few of the boosters that still worked and pushing the engine to its limit just as the gigantic mollusk was about to gobble up the submarine, blasting a stream of superheated water bubbles right into the octopus' eye.

The onboard crew yelled out in pain, grunting and panting as the submarine cracked and the metal it was built from shrieked, bent threatened to give way. Had the emerging of the submarine, riding a bursting stream of sticky ink, octopus blood and water filtered out of its mouth, been any slower, perhaps the vehicle would have burst from the external pressure but it had managed to force through the unstable rocks of the collapsing cave and emerge in an arcing flight first before breaking down completely.

"Great… Now I'm stranded at sea…" Bulma cried out.

"Oh, come on. Let's just feel lucky that we made it out of there…" Krillin could not stop panting incessantly.

"Yeah, being stuck on a broken submarine in the middle of the ocean with my girlfriend isn't exactly my worst nightmare…" Yamcha smiled looking at Bulma who softened her glare once she made eye contact with Yamcha.

"She almost left you to drown there, you know…" Krillin squinted at him. His snark turned to despair once Bulma's fist landed right in the blind spot at the top of the boy's head.

"I was just going through all the options, I would never have left without Yamcha!" Bulma growled like a tyrannical dictator punishing her subject for the crime of wrong-thinking.


	31. The End of the Ribbon Brigade

"Hey, look, I think it's Bulma and the others!" Goku yelled at Chayote, at some point having overtaken his fellow Saiyan and shot up ahead a good couple of paces. That was just fine, given how the two were looking for a specific island it was just fine that Goku shot out ahead and did some preliminary scouting with his childish glee and wonder at every miniscule detail that called for it in his eyes and Chayote had some downtime to look around proper.

"Bulma better be okay…" Chayote grumbled while the two dived down and stopped just before the broken down submarine that was slowly submerging and had long since drowned had it not been for the Sisyphean labor of Yamcha and Krillin to keep the water out.

"Goku!" Bulma jumped from the sub, in the heat of the moment she must have thought that the Kinto cloud would support her weight and keep her from falling but she fell right through and had it not been for her arms tied around Goku's shoulders she'd have plummeted right back down and submerged like a brick together with her busted submarine.

"Well, at least Bulma's safe… Don't you dare die before you complete my spaceship." Chayote complained.

"Yeah well… I survived, somehow…" the inventor mumbled while Goku hovered over the submarine, letting Bulma slip off his shoulders and land onto it.

"No thanks to yourself, plus, it would have been nice if you helped us remove water from the hull even a little bit…" Krillin squinted at the only freeloader in the sinking submarine.

"What was that!?" Bulma stood up, imposing her tyrannical presence over the shriveled boy who should have known better, in all honesty, than to say out loud what was on his thoughts with Bulma around.

"N-Nothing… Say, how are we going to return home anyway?" Krillin changed the subject. "Neither of us can fly on the Kinto clouds."

"Chayote's cloud should be able to keep you guys on it, although, not sure all of you will fit onto it…" Goku wondered.

"Forget it! I'm not traveling on one of those things as a passenger! It's terribly uncomfortable! That's why I originally invented the Micro-Band anyway!" Bulma shook her fist up at Chayote and Goku before wrapping her arms over her chest and raising her nose up while turning her face away from the two Saiyans.

"Didn't you guys arrive here with two submaroos?" Goku wondered, scratching his head. "Where's the other, did you blowed it up?"

"This is Blue's submarine. It is ours that got wrecked." Yamcha explained.

"I see, so Blue is dead, I take it?" Chayote wondered, extending her hand over the supposed graveyard of the bastard that very nearly cost her the return back home. Even if Chayote had not yet mastered Ki control, at this one moment in time her heart and body were all in one place and wanted the utter annihilation of that accursed man, even if that meant obliterating a drowned corpse to bits.

"Who knows… A giant octopus emerged from down under and Krillin blasted him somewhere deep down before the cave collapsed, then he emerged again but the submarine's thrusters and boosters buried it even further down. Blue must be buried under all that rock somewhere, even if the collapse of the cave did not kill him, the water pressure and drowning would eventually…" Yamcha looked down at the deep with a sense of frightful respect and dread of it.

"A cave? Did it get blowed up too?" Goku wondered, sitting onto his cloud with his legs crossed and tail waggling in hesitant excitement.

"I don't think so," Bulma growled. "The cave looked to be far larger than what we've explored. It's supposed to be the place where a gang of pirates hid their booty from a long, long time ago so it is likely to be larger than that."

"Treasure? Did this pirate clan of yours was capable of space travel?" Chayote wondered.

"Are you kidding me!?" Bulma flipped out, "They swam around in old wooden ships and fought with swords like a bunch of ruffians!"

"I see…" Chayote sighed.

"I wanna see!" Goku hopped on his cloud with a childish smile. "Wanna see the pirates and their swords and the treasure."

"Sure, just submerge eight kilometers that direction and bust your way into the cave or go one step ahead and find their secret entrance…" Bulma taunted Goku, thinking she sounded snarky but after a plumpy splash her eyes blew out of her face – Goku actually took the challenge and dived down.

"Wait! What are you doing!? You'll die for sure! Then who's going to get me back home!?" Bulma tried yelling at the darkness of the abyss but Goku was leagues below the layer where he could have heard a thing.

"Hmph, don't worry, after the grueling beating I got him through at the tournament, his body is far beyond being capable of surviving measly water pressure." Chayote sighed. That was what she was afraid of – that Goku would survive the water pressure and find his way into the cave, which was inevitable, and then he'll be lost there, gawking at stupid nonsense whole day.

"Look, Chayote, you wouldn't mind diving down with him?" Bulma looked up at Chayote. "It's a long shot but if you could find the entrance, maybe you'd find some leftover tech from all the salvagers and treasure hunters, maybe some of them would have functional submarines and capsules still with them?"

"Sounds tedious, I think I'll pass…" Chayote shook her head.

"Well, I can't build your spaceship if I'm stranded at sea, now can I!?" Bulma growled at her.

"Even if I find a submarine, I don't think I would be able to drive one if I wanted to." Chayote shrugged, preparing to dive after Goku.

"You don't have to drive it, just pull it out here somehow, plus, if you find a case with capsules in any of the wreckage, that will be fine too," Bulma explained.

A dull and neat splash later, Chayote had submerged underwater, leaving behind just a pile with clothes behind on the cloud.

"You sure have a way of bossing people around and have them work for you…" Krillin squinted at Bulma while still shoveling the water out of the busted hull by entire buckets.

"I am the inheritor of a business corporation, it's in my genes…" Bulma smirked. "Now make sure we don't sink until Goku and Chayote come up!"

Earth oceans were admirable and quite beautiful. It seemed as if their true beauty became more apparent once one penetrated a decent distance down into their endless depths, however, in a sick twist of irony, those same depths became robbed of most of the light that could reach those areas, making one only able to see a very limited amount of it, even further down, not only light but even the warmth of the local star of the system failed to reach, making it desolate and not beautiful at all, from what Chayote could ascertain.

In that darkness, it was near impossible finding an entrance. Chayote was after all just wandering from place to place, feeling up a cold and moist rock and observing the bottom for any signs of life. She could hold her breath for a decent amount of time although that time was made significantly shorter by the notable pressure down there. That same air that Chayote held deep down was beginning to run out short but judging by an absence of a child-sized, bloated and pale corpse floating around, Goku managed to find his way inside the cave somehow.

Chayote lifted her hand up, trying to create a Ki blast and light up her surroundings but failed to do so. The exact reason for her failure eluded her, she seemed to truly want to light up her path and find her way into the cave, then again, she was coerced by Bulma to dive down here anyway so maybe she was not as fully into the task as she thought she'd be. With the air running out and having no other options but emerge and face Bulma's ridicule and have to repeat the dive, Chayote delivered a powerful blow at the nearest rock formation and the rushing water pulled her in without asking the teen Saiyan for her permission.

The water rushed straight into some odd, spotted floor without having much more options for movement, Chayote slammed right down into the floor. The Saiyan heard buzzing above her and once she dug and clutched herself out of the water's clutches, she saw spear-sized arrows littering the walls. This certainly was no natural formation, she had found her entrance even if she did not quite enter by the entrance per se. Still, this hole threatened to eventually submerge what remained of the cave as well so Chayote stood up and rushed on ahead, at the nearest source of light, figuring that it might have been the direction where all of the submarines and ships might have been left over.

The rocky floor beneath the Saiyan's feet just disappeared. With a gaping mouth, Chayote plummeted down into a chasm that once opened spread much more light than the port up ahead – down below was the searing lava that even Chayote did not feel confident about being able to survive.

"Right now I feel really confident about not falling into a pit of lava and getting incinerated!" the Saiyan yelled out as she cupped her hands in front of her and let out an intense, white wave of Ki that split the pool of lava in half but also propelled the Saiyan back up. There was still a minor problem, however, even if she did throw herself back up in the air and postpone her infernal demise in the lava, Chayote was still floating up above the blazing death down below.

"Dammit!" she cursed, trying to expel Ki through every pore of her body, strong enough to perhaps create a field around her that might have held the lava at bay or just propelled her some other direction, either direction would have been fine as the footing of the ceiling or the walls to the side would have given Chayote a chance to leap to safety. Ki was a powerful force, more than capable of propelling her to a certain direction but… She didn't move either way.

In fact, she was not even falling…

"Okay…" Chayote looked around, finding herself stuck in mid-air out of the necessity to not die and thought about floating upward, with less than gentle and graceful motions, she swam upward, clutching and grasping for elevation before floating to the side. It took a good couple of minutes before Chayote realized that she did not need to "swim" in mid-air and that she controlled her aerial movement with Ki and not the physical forces of her body.

The room ahead was a port. It was just like what Bulma was referring to – a massive harbor with old submarines, boats, and ships. None of them were actually wooden or that weak, in fact, some of those looked like they were sturdy enough to not only survive emerging from down here but they might have been able to take more punishment than fancy modern subs any day of the week. Plus, the remaining ships might have served as fine military-grade equipment for Bulma to build Chayote a spaceship out of.

A mechanized sound of turning gears alerted Chayote in the last second to jump out of the way of a swinging sword. She glanced at the mechanized attacker and found herself truly gleeful for the first time in a long while – it was just what she was looking for – an actual robot, just like the Metallitrons she had destroyed back at Red Ribbon Base and like the one that Goku thrashed back in Muscle Tower.

"Hey, you've found it!" Goku laughed out, sitting atop of a storage container that surrounded the place. The boy fell forward, using the tip of his tail to cling onto the top of the container and swing himself the other way, as a playful taunt for the skull-donning Pirate Robot. "It was kind of getting old fooling around with it."

"You did not trash it…" Chayote declared, holding the robot's tail with her foot. It had prevented the robot from moving but after a few good yanks, the tail snapped and stayed sparking on the floor while the robot charged on ahead, spitting tongues of flames from an arm-mounted cannon that looked similar to the bullet-spitting weaponry the Red Ribbon employed to no effect against the Saiyans. "I'm impressed."

"Sure, you said I owed you a robot for the spaceship…" Goku shrugged, evading the flames with a casual dash back before jumping onto the container blocking his retreat and jumping over the Pirate Robot and closer to Chayote. "So how do we bring it to Bulma without thrashing it?" he wondered.

That was a good question. By now Goku might have punched right through the robot but if it hit something sensitive and explosive, like the flame-tank that supplied the flammable liquid to the flamethrower, he might have blown the robot up which would leave Chayote with just the submarines back on the island.

"I'll find the blueprints for this thing they'll show you exactly where to punch. Just keep it busy." Chayote glared at Goku who just nodded and yawned. He was beginning to grow bored of this mechanized toy, it was good that Chayote had found him when she did – he might have thrashed it otherwise, depending on how adamant the boy was on keeping promises…

The surface of the calm oceans bubbled, alarming Bulma that it might have been another aquatic predator trying its luck at claiming an alluring piece of meat swimming about. By the time that countless ancient submarines began emerging from underwater, one after another, Yamcha and Krillin had to repel multiple plesiosaurs and sharks pushing their luck for the mouth-watering reward of multiple floating people.

Chayote and Goku bust from one of the submarines. Goku was smiling from the bottom of his heart, as usual, giving his floating friends a peace sign with his right hand.

"There are some military-grade robot parts in one of these submarines. I'll expect my spaceship built in the nearest future." Chayote declared while looking away at the horizon, trying to distance herself from the bunch of Earthlings that clung to the spaceships and made their way in.

"Finally, my limbs were beginning to turn webbed from all the floating…" Krillin complained, looking at his shaking hands with a pathetic face.

"This is seriously impressive, you two, how did you emerge this many ships all at once?" Yamcha wondered.

"Turns out that the pirates had an exit for all the ships they stored, likely the same way they got those ships into the harbor, to begin with. I did not know how to control those ships so I and Goku just pushed them through." Chayote shrugged, blushing a little at the compliment and feeling miserable that she showed it.

Goku's hearty laughter thundered out, "Chayote sunk a whole bunch of ships too…" he declared, pointing his finger at the older Saiyan.

"Turns out some of them weren't designed to be used underwater. I'm not sure how they got them down there, to begin with, in that case…" Chayote admitted. The number of ships with masts and sophisticated figureheads sank like bricks or got crushed by the water pressure the moment they left the safety of the secret tunnel of the Pirate Cave. "Either way, they were useless to us anyway, too weak to survive."

"This will do. I'll need to design a control panel that will control all of those ships at once, but it should not take more than a couple of minutes, the technology here is ancient." Bulma sighed, finally looking at least somewhat content. That was good, in this current state of hers she was much more likely to get working on Chayote's spaceship. "Did you see that bastard Blue down there?"

"Nope, the rest of the cave will soon sink too so… I don't think he survived." Chayote shrugged. "The pressure down there is too much for Earthlings so it is not too far out there to say that."

"I guess but… I'd feel safer if I'd have seen the body…" Bulma sighed. Encountering that man and having a gun pressed to her head like that must have been frightening for a puny weakling like her. That was good, maybe this brush with death will encourage her to pick up some weights and start training for once, not that her pathetic power level could have been improved by much.

"Bulma… That's pretty messed up…" Krillin squinted at the young woman.

"No, quite intelligent actually." Chayote shrugged. "I'll expect you to work on my spaceship when we get you back to Roshi's island…"

"Sure thing, supervisor!" Bulma flamed at the Saiyan. Chayote turned around and looked away without noticing the irony in Bulma's eyes, taking what she said for granted.

"Let's go home, I'm hungry..." Goku complained, holding his belly and leaning forward as it growled.

* * *

"Where are all the soldiers and all their equipment!?" Chayote lost her shit back at the island.

"Some old guy with puffy blue hair and a tanned skin showed up alongside a bunch of soldiers. They seemed to be really interested in that one dead Silver guy while they just kind of shoveled all the rest into one airplane and flew away. They flew off in the direction of the Pirate Cave so I'm surprised you did not meet them..." Roshi's mental communications blared into Chayote's head out of nowhere. Communicating with the minimized old geezer this way was beginning to get old by now. "I was about to attack them but then they started just cleaning up my island so... I don't think they were affiliated with any army at all. They did not carry any symbols and kept on talking about how the Red Ribbon Army and the Ribbon Brigade Armies were all decimated. I'm not sure if they were with any of the Ribbon Brigade armies but they confirmed they're all wiped out."

"I was about to give those submarines to Bulma so that she could make me my spaceship…" Chayote grumbled with her arms over the chest like a capricious child.

"That's just fine. Those robot parts will be good enough and all the armor layers from the hulls of the ancient subs will serve as good scrap too. Right after I repair the Micro-Band and get Roshi back to normal size, I'll right on that." Bulma assured Chayote with a pat on the shoulder. It may have been the first time that the genius inventor was not mad about something with the Saiyan, it almost made Chayote want to be nice to Bulma in return.

"Forget it, by that time I'll learn how to fly home by myself…" Chayote dismissed the young woman with her hand and lifted off the ground a little bit using her Ki like before. "The gravity in this planet is pathetic, frankly, I'm surprised it took me this long to learn this…"

"Wait… So if you won't be using Dark Kinto, maybe I can reserve it?" Krillin raised his hand.

"Forget it, baldy." Chayote shook her head. "I can barely float this way, it would be slower than walking to travel like this so I'm sticking with Kinto."

"You didn't have to be this mean about it…" Krillin poked both of his fingers together while looking away and then patted his head a couple of times.

"Well, Roshi does need to go back to normal size so don't be a diva…" Bulma wrapped her arms over her chest and got in Chayote's way, had she not misread the Saiyan's intentions and had not been incredibly useful, Chayote would have blasted a hole in her gut that very second… If she could get her Ki control to work right…

"That's not what I was suggesting, I was saying that I will take care of that, you just focus on the spaceship." Chayote declared, making everyone quite shocked at that revelation.

"Really? No offense, Chayote-san but… This is the first time you would do something not completely selfish…" Yamcha shrugged with a smile.

"Well, if I collect the Dragon Balls first and wish Roshi to return back to normal size, then Bulma can keep working on my spaceship and I can get off this planet sooner and join Lord Frieza's Army. I wouldn't say it's not useful to my own goals…" Chayote shrugged.

"I see… It checks out in that case…" Krillin nodded while looking at Yamcha.

"Well then… We've found this one in the Pirate Cave, right before it caved in." Yamcha pulled out and handed Chayote the starred crystal orb. The Saiyan took it and handed it to Goku, who promptly placed it into the little sack he stored all of his Dragon Balls in.

"That makes us two Dragon Balls short!" Goku declared.

Chayote zoomed out her Dragon Radar and lifted her eyebrow with a widening smirk. "Well, well… I know just where the other Dragon Balls are located, one's right near the Korin Tower and the other one's right past the hole where the Red Ribbon Army base used to be." She declared.

"Hmmm… Roshi says I should go too, he says that climbing the Korin Tower would be good for my training so I guess I'm tagging along." Goku leaned back on his crossed arms while shaking his tail in excitement.

"Suit yourself. As long as we're clear on the goal here…" Chayote shrugged.


	32. Reunited with the Four Stars At Last!

A spiraling blitz of two beams, a bright amber one and a gloomy dark one attracted the attention of a little boy doing his best to chop down a young tree with his fun-size tomahawk that would have been more suited for use as a projectile weapon rather than a chopping tool. The boy flipped his axe over his shoulder and ran off towards his camp. His face was full of determination and hope to see a familiar face. Upon forcing his way through a thick bush and entering the campsite, the boy's face burst with joy.

"Chayote!" he yelled out with teary eyes.

"Wipe your snot off your face, geez, Upa, you're such a crybaby…" Chayote smirked and hopped off her cloud, letting Upa to run up to her and wrap his arms around her leg. It hardly seemed like something she should have bothered doing but the Saiyan liked the warm and puny feeling of this brat around her leg so she just looked away to try and look distant instead of confronting the boy's action head-on the way she was expected to.

"And who is this young man?" Bora wondered, looking up at Goku who just stood atop of Kinto, squat on his knees and observing the curious encampment and the odd inhabitants of these lands with curiosity.

"That's Son Goku. He is also an alien, like me. From the same planet in fact, hence the tail." Chayote explained. "Say, we're looking for a Dragon Ball, this orange crystal orb with stars on it. Our radar says that it's around these parts…"

"Father, do you think that it might be…?" Upa turned to Bora who just nodded with a stern face and went into the tent to scrounge through the wooden chests where all the tools and spare gear were being kept. Not a few minutes later, Bora left the tent with a Dragon Ball in hand.

"This orb has landed from the sky, heated like a meteor. We wondered if it might have been a fallen star, either way, we considered that it was a gift from God of the Korin Tower. I suppose if it is you who seeks it, a chosen one of the God of Korin Tower himself, we can grant it to you." Bora explained, extending his hand and loosening his grip to let the Dragon Ball roll around in his massive hand and gleam with its orange shine, letting his four stars see some glitter as well.

"Hmmm…" Goku turned his head before jumping up in ecstatic glee and wrapping his limbs around Bora's arm like a little monkey grabbing a tree branch as he examined the Dragon Ball in Bora's hand. "This is it, this is the Four Stars!"

"Hmph… Too bad, huh? You've been looking for it all this time and now you'll have to part with it just because the old geezer couldn't help it but perv over Launch…" Chayote chuckled to herself. Upa turned to Bora with some questions but the seasoned native warrior shook his head with a blush on his cheeks. "Anyway, you two are idiots, this is nothing what a star looks like, stars are massive balls of fire and gas, if one did fall to Earth, it would get incinerated and destroyed in an instant."

"Say, say…" Goku landed on his feet with the Four Stars in his hands and looked up at Bora. "What's this about the God of Korin Tower?"

Bora turned toward the Korin Tower behind him and pointed at it. "This is the Sacred Land of Korin. I am the protector of this land and Upa will inherit that honor after my passing. We are granted longevity and strength by the God of Korin Tower to protect his sacred grounds. Chayote fell from the sky, just like this curious ball one day, even more, she has climbed the tower and trained there with God himself. She can be rash and immature at times but God must have chosen her for a reason."

"You can climb up there and break a leg training…" Chayote shrugged. "I don't see there being much point to it, you're too strong at this point for the training to have any point."

"Then why did you climb there?" Goku raised a suspicious eyebrow. "You're not trying to hold back training from me so that you could remain stronger than me, are you?"

"Young man, the honor of training with the God of Korin Tower is the most treasured privilege granted only to the most powerful and spiritual individuals, it is not a gem that is to be hidden away and withheld, it is unlikely that a little one like you would even survive the training, even if you are as tough as Chayote." Bora interrupted the two.

"Alright!" Goku tightened the belt of his uniform, "Now I definitely am going to climb up there!"

"Suit yourself…" Chayote shrugged after a sigh. "It shouldn't take more than a day or two, I'll wait here until you come back."

"Really!?" Upa got hyped up to the point where he hunched over and squatted.

"Sure, do you have any food?" Chayote shrugged.

"Sure, I've been hunting dinosaurs lately, just like we used to!" Upa jumped up and dragged Chayote into the tent to show off the fruits of his latest hunt. "I didn't have nearly as much training though since we can't preserve the meat so we only hunt as much as we need to and with you gone we no longer need so many dinosaurs to feed ourselves…"

"Food? I could eat too before taking on the tower…" Goku scratched his belly. He had been complaining long before returning to Roshi's island about how hungry he was and he barely grabbed a thing to eat before the two Saiyans departed to the Sacred Land.

"Sure, oh, and don't take the Kinto up to the tower, that asshole Mr. Popo will appear and kick you back down. He might be pretty strong cause his kicks hurt a decent deal…" Chayote warned while warming up. She was certain that Goku would want to burn off some of his calories as usual after eating. He always stuffed himself too much and had to burn some of the food off.

* * *

"Hey!" Goku yelled out, landing on the Kinto from over the clouds. "I'm not sure if you were right… The training was pretty fun, even if I did catch the cat pretty easy…"

"Really? Go figure…" Chayote sighed. "Guess you were more of a weakling than I thought."

"That's not a nice thing to say, Chayote, you must be getting unruly without me to reel you back…" Upa flicked Chayote in the forehead while the Saiyan was sitting on the grass by the fire and scratching her teeth.

"Yeah, Korin taught me more about Ki control and gave a bunch of the Senzu for the road." Goku showed Chayote the tiny bag that looked ancient enough to be given by Korin up the tower. "He also gave me some bells, I'm not sure what those are for…"

"Really? He didn't give me any bells…" Chayote stood up and stretched out, preparing to return to the road-trip for the Dragon Balls now that Goku's training expedition was complete.

"I must have been really good!" Goku gave Chayote a peace sign with his fingers and that monkey-like grin of his that he loved to employ. "Though Korin did give me some slack for peeking in his jars of water, I thought there might have been more food that he was hiding but there wasn't any."

"Really?" Chayote raised an eyebrow, "What did you see?"

"I saw some green, slug-guy laughing by some large tower, I saw another slug-guy but all shriveled up with a cane and then I saw a man with odd armor that looked exactly like me but had a scar on his face and looked really angry. He had a tail too, just like us." Goku scratched his head, clearly, he had some trouble recalling anything that happened more than a few hours ago…

Chayote's eyes twitched in surprise. Another man with a tail and appearance similar to Goku, pissed off and wearing armor… That must have been another Saiyan. What could that mean? Would Saiyans return to Earth to pick Son Goku up? Maybe his parents dumped him here on purpose, they sure as hell would be pissed off finding the planet completely untouched by their wayward loser of a son… They'd probably kick Goku's ass and blow this planet to smithereens. Then again, this flash of the future to come was the third one, by now Chayote had not even experienced the second one of hers so it must have been way ahead in the future.

"I see… Well… I guess it's best that we get going. Muten Roshi must not like being tiny and I want Bulma to get on building my spaceship as soon as possible." Chayote declared. If Saiyans really were to come here to Earth, if she could take Son Goku with her and leave to space, she might prevent the unfortunate outcome that would befall this planet in the future. For some reason, Chayote didn't feel like seeing this planet as sad and lifeless space dust.

"You're leaving already?" Upa's lip whimpered.

"Don't be a nuisance, I've played with you for a whole day, that's more than I'm willing to grant most. Nobody likes a crybaby…" Chayote sneered at the boy.

"That's rude!" Upa pressed his tiny fists to his sides and yelled out at Chayote. "That's it, I'm coming with you and fixing that nasty attitude you have! You must be hurting Son Goku and his friends a great deal and who knows how many good guys you're killing without me to rule you back!"

"Upa…" Bora expressed his worry, he squatted on his knees and pressed his massive hand that enveloped the boy's entire head. "Are you sure about that?"

"Don't worry, I've come to better understand this planet's definitions of good and evil over my time here. If you chicken out, I won't hold it against you, but if you come, you'll have to pull your own weight." Chayote crossed her arms over her chest and jumped up onto her Kinto.

Upa looked a bit intimidated by the fact that his decision was so easily allowed into the rotation. This may have been the first time that his calls mattered and were considered alongside those of his father and Chayote's. He was not used to being in so much control over his own fate and that freedom, that overwhelming breath of fresh air was beginning to choke him up.

"Y-Yeah! I'm coming with and raising you right!" Upa nodded with determination flaring up in his tiny eyes of his oversized for his puny body head.

"Well then, this will be your first test, can you keep up with our traveling speed?" Chayote wondered with a mocking tone, raising her Dark Kinto a bit higher up in the air.

Much to her surprise, Upa took it into the air and flipped over his front, sadly, he phased through the Dark Kinto and planted onto the floor face and knees first. The boy got off the ground with a sniffy nose and watering and dirty face, Chayote could smell the weakness and the desire to run and hide behind the leg of his stronger father in him but much to her repeated amazement, Upa jumped up and went for Goku's Kinto this time.

"Good luck, brat, even I can't ride…" Chayote was about to laugh at another one of Upa's faceplants when the boy's bottom bounced off of Kinto's soft and cottony surface, Upa wrapped his arms and legs around Goku and yelled out some native battle cry.

"I can keep up, just like this!" Upa declared.

"Alright then, off for the last Dragon Ball we go…" Chayote smirked, feeling some pleasant swarm of butterflies buzzing in her stomach and tiny goosebumps accumulating over her body. She had never felt that feeling before, this joy with somebody else than herself but lately she's been feeling a whole bunch of new and unexplored emotions around those Earthlings.

Something odd that she noticed was the feeling of her power swelling up as those strong feelings came up. This planet… The more Chayote let it seep into her, the more it surprised her with undiscovered secrets and ways to become stronger.

The two Kinto took off and spiraled out of control, taking it to the skies.

* * *

"Heh, this sure takes me back…" Goku noted while the two were buzzing up in the air beside one another at a controlled and steady travel pace.

"What do you mean?" Chayote turned at the boy.

"Looking for the Dragon Balls, meeting new people, getting stronger in the process…" Goku clutched his fists by his side, Upa looked at the mimic swelling with determination in Goku's eyes with a proud smile.

"So you've gotten stronger by just seeking for those wish-granting orbs?" Chayote wondered.

"Yeah, if it weren't for the Dragon Balls, I'd have not met Bulma and Yamcha and Krillin, Muten Roshi knew my Grandpa so who knows… Maybe I'd have run into him at some point but… Those Dragon Balls tend to bring people together, except when bad guys like the Ribbons are looking for them." Goku's face turned more serious at the mention of the Ribbon Brigade as the collective of all the different Ribbon Armies was called, apparently.

"But… Beating all those guys up is a manner of training of its own." Chayote brought up to which Goku's attitude brightened up.

"Yeah, you've got it!" Goku raised his fist up with a determined expression. "Can't wait to see who's got the seventh Dragon Ball… Maybe it's some really strong guy and we won't get it without beating them!"

"Keep dreaming." Chayote shrugged. She had long since taken note of something that the Attendant of the Gods Whis told her way back about the Earth being a planet of irrelevant power levels, a safe place for her to grow stronger until the measuring of the worth of their Universe finally comes. "It will likely just be stuck in a tree or something, I mean we've already found the one at the bottom of an ocean."

"Don't lose your adventurer's spirit, Chayote." Upa cheered, his one hand reached for his belt and removed a tomahawk that he swung wildly over his head, the boy almost lost his grip on Goku's waist and slipped off a few times but he then reattached his tiny weapon back to its place and maintained a steady grip. Goku looked somewhat entertained by the spirit of his backseat passenger.

The two clouds accelerated and split a massive cluster of cloud cumuli.

* * *

"Move aside, you chaff, make way for Emperor Pilaf!" a pint-sized, anthropomorphic Shiba with a ninja uniform and a katana on his back shoved a handful of tough-looking brutes standing in his way, grabbing the handle of his blade on his back.

"What was that, you little shrimp!?" a sumo wrestler the size of a small house turned around while a bald muscle-head with a manly mustache cracked his knuckles by the side of the chubby martial artist. Before their fists could be put to work, a thunderous rattle of bullets by the side of their feet sent the handful of martial artists lined up in front of a small entrance hall building scatter to the sides in fear for their lives while a tall and slender young woman with a military uniform and long, dark hair approached them from the back, followed by a tiny, blue dwarf with a nefarious grin.

"Move aside and make way for Emperor Pilaf, are you deaf?" the woman let her submachine gun rest by her shoulder while she smirked with her lips dyed so red that they clawed at one's eyes.

"Y-Yes ma'am… I might be just a little bit deaf…" the sumo wrestler gestured with his fingers while laughing in fear and showing how little bit deaf he was while he and his crew shuffled aside, letting Emperor Pilaf and his goons pass.

"Nice work, Mai, if getting all the Dragon Balls will be this easy, this will go smoothly like a knife through butter!" the tiny, blue man snickered to his hand and proceeded with his goons toward a very confused pink ghost in a straw hat.

"Greetings, my name is Emperor Pilaf and I have come here to claim the Dragon Ball that is in this location!" Pilaf approached the ghost, extending his hands at the two goons enforcing his will. "These are my most trusted enforcers, Mai and Shu…"

Mai cocked her gun while Shu drew and re-sheathed his sword upon being introduced just to show off that the two meant business.

"I'm sorry but you guys must wait in the line if you wish to challenge Baba's fighters." The Ghost Usher informed the trio. "You don't look like much of a fighter so it's fine if your two goons do the fighting but you will still need to wait."

"Fight? We're not here to fight anyone, but we will hurt you all if you don't hand us the Dragon Ball!" Pilaf declared, looking offended that he was spoken down to in such a manner. The offense was so transparent in the face of the blue dwarf as his blue skin blushed just like that of anybody else's did.

"Oh, so you're paying customers? Sadly, only divination services are for paying customers. The Dragon Ball you spoke of is reserved to someone who will be visiting Fortuneteller Baba in the future." The Ghost Usher informed the trio.

"What was that?! You ignorant bastard, we're gonna light this place up!" Emperor Pilaf rolled back his sleeves but Mai stepped up and moved the pint-sized Emperor of something aside.

"We might be able to come to a consensus about a price, Emperor Pilaf used to be immensely rich, he owns property in the Diablo Desert and he used to own the castle in said property too, still, the property is still invaluable..." Mai reasoned. "Surely you don't want all this trouble for somebody who might or might not even show up…"

"Oh, but they've already shown up…" the Ghost Usher pointed at the door where Chayote, Son Goku and Upa stood, obstructing the intense sunlight bursting in from the outside.

"It's that blasted kid!" Pilaf flipped out, pointing his finger at Goku. "The monster that destroyed my castle! Kill him now!"

"B-But, Pilaf-sama, our combination transformation must be used outdoors…" Mai reasoned with the tiny Emperor.

"Very well, monster brat, let's take this fight outside!" Pilaf pointed at Goku with a twisted expression of a yakuza boss who was about to cut someone bothersome.

"Huh? You want to fight me?" Goku pointed at himself confused. "Are you sure? You guys are pretty weak…"

"Now you've done it, outside, now!" Pilaf yelled out while taking a hilarious dash with his short legs outside. It appeared that Goku had a unique ability to pick fights without even doing a single thing, it was something Chayote had admired about the young man as she usually had to work her best to piss people off to such an extent… Either way, she'd observe this fight for what it was worth.


	33. Baba's Offer

Goku did his usual warming up routine, stretching out his waist, his arms, and his legs before just standing up straight. No stance, just his legs spread out as wide as his shoulders and his arms hanging tightly beside him. He was relaxed but his body looked ready to tense up at any moment. From the martial arts perspective, Chayote couldn't read him at all. If she ever went up against Son Goku again, her superior strength, speed, and toughness would have to be her aces. In terms of martial arts, the boy was in a whole different world.

Just what was it that Korin taught him?

"We'll destroy you for what you did to my castle!" Emperor Pilaf threatened Son Goku and threw a capsule up in the air. Had it been Chayote confronting the shrimp, she'd have tried snagging that thing in mid-air.

By now Chayote had learned how those Earthling capsules worked. One pressed the button and flung them to a larger space, in the air or on the ground. Then, whatever was sealed inside came out in a puff of smoke and a pop. If one was to catch a capsule in mid-air and then hold the pin down, they might have stopped the process of revealing the object, it was just a theory, but it was one Chayote would have been confident betting her victory on.

A green round, blue mechanical suit slammed onto the ground. Pilaf scurried inside while his goons, Shu and Mai, revealed their own mechanical suits: Mai's was the most massive and pink, Shu had one that was the tallest but his suit was all in the length of its legs. Like a spider in a way…

"You've no idea what trouble you've put us through!" Pilaf clutched his fist out in his mechanical suit. "After you've demolished my castle, then the Silver Ribbon Army totaled the Sky Fortress… I'm broke now, broke!"

"That's right, Pilaf-sama was willing to sacrifice his wish for the Dragon Balls, he was willing to wish for his money back." Shu butt into his master's speech.

"That's right, but then it hit me, if I am in charge of the entire world, I'll have all the money I want!" Pilaf chuckled while a repulsing drool weighed down from his lip and his cheeks blushed. He was daydreaming in the middle of his fated encounter. Clearly, he had a bone to pick with Son Goku and yet he was daydreaming. Chayote was not shocked at all to find out that Goku had once destroyed a castle of his and foiled something that this loser tried to accomplish.

"So you guys have the last Dragon Ball and you want to fight for it?" Goku wondered.

Without answering, Pilaf's mechanical suit withdrew its limbs and rolled out at Son Goku like a bowling ball. Goku extended his hands out, stopping the wrecking ball in progress without even breaking a sweat. The monkey boy even took the time to show a filthy facial mimic to the worked up and busted Pilaf who was shaken by the sudden stop of his rolling robot suit.

A black shadow covered the ground underneath Goku, Shu's mechanical suit took a wild dive from up above, trying to stomp Son Goku. The shock from the stomp sent Pilaf in his suit stumbling back shortly after he made his limbs re-appear. Goku had dashed back at the last moment and was keeping his eyes on the pair, he did not even notice that Mai's robot was gone as well. No… There was no way he missed that, hers was the largest suit of them all.

Goku thudded into the metallic giant and the powerful arms of Mai's robot slammed Goku in between them, threatening to crush the boy. Chayote sharpened her glance, she knew exactly what Goku's play was, there was no reason why he would act this careless and get caught by something this harmless. These three buffoons were no match even to the Pirate Robot from the cave which Son Goku demolished with a single punch through its core or any of the Metallitrons that the Saiyans had met.

"Ho ho ho ho!" Pilaf laughed out, showing off a peace sign with his mechanical hands. He likely only had it designed with fingers solely for that reason… "We do not have the Dragon Ball, this mean old hag that lives inside this temple does. We came here to take it from her but this mean ghost told us it's being held here for you."

Mai's arms exploded into metallic bits and snapped wires. Goku burst out from the robot's grip without any effort whatsoever, flipped over in mid-air after kicking off of the top of Mai's mechanical suit and landed on both feet right in front of the two robots with a bland and just a tiny bit gleeful stare directed at the two robot suits.

Mai's eyes were as ajar as her red lips, she still struggled to believe that her treasured suit would get totaled like this.

"M-Mai! How are we supposed to merge now!?" Pilaf slammed the buttons of his control panel, his mechanical suit fired out its arms at Goku, the hands were held by thick and extended string of steel wire but Goku dodged the rocket-chop by just leaning his head to the side, the shooting chops hit Mai straight in the chest and sent her robot falling down. Goku held his head bent to the side while Pilaf's robotic limbs snapped back to their original location.

"If you guys don't have the Dragon Ball, this is kind of a waste of our time, sorry." Goku smiled and became just a transparent blur.

"He disappeared!" Pilaf and Shu yelled out in perfect synchrony.

The next time Pilaf saw Goku was when the boy was right in front of his suit, with a light tap of his palm, Goku crushed the mechanical suit to pieces while sending Pilaf out of it with just minor bruises and just enough force to tumble the little dweeb until the nearest wall of the nearby temple. The tail of Shu's mechanical suit leaned out over the head of the robot and aimed at Goku, blasting a loose stream of flames at him but Goku was no longer there to burn in them.

"Yoink!" Goku laughed out while ripping out the long leg of Shu's mechanical suit and then crashing it into the fallen suit, forcing it to erupt in a small smolder and a spray of sparks. Shu powered out of the wreckage of his suit not too long after and just collapsed on the ground nearby.

"We… We didn't even have a chance to grab his tail…" Shu wheezed out. Chayote's look changed from one of feeling like her time was being very wasted to one that was dead-serious.

"You should kill them, Son Goku." She declared without any nonsense to her voice.

"Huh? I don't think they're really all that evil." Upa scratched his head. "They seem more like the prankster type, even if they think highly of themselves."

"It does not matter. They know the Saiyan weakness. Our strength disappears when our tails are grabbed." Chayote explained.

"Hmm? You did not kill Nam and he also grabbed your tail." Goku pointed out.

"Maybe, he was just a martial artist though, he did not want to kill me nor did he stand in my way." Chayote shrugged. She blushed a bit when even someone like Goku pointed out the flaws in her mean talk. He was right, she was getting soft. She had a decent excuse now but… Just how long until she surrounds herself with friends like Goku and forgets where she's going and what has to be done?

"Nah, they're harmless." Goku waved his hand at the recovering Pilaf and his minions. "I'm long past the point where they would have been a threat. Plus, I bet if we train hard we could strengthen our tails. My grandpa used to tell me about it all the time when he trained me but I never went around to doing that. It's hard to train something that saps your strength every time you put pressure on it…"

"Hmmm… If such a thing is truly possible…" Chayote scratched her chin. In a way, she liked the adrenaline and the possibility of a challenge of having a clear weakness like that, it made her stay on her toes even against pathetic weaklings like the Earthlings but if the other Saiyans truly were coming… She might have needed all the advantages she could get. "Fine, keep them alive but make sure to toughen up your tail. And I'll be doing the fighting from this point on, you waste too much time!"

"Sure, whatever, I've just fought so it will be your turn anyway…" Goku shrugged.

The trio proceeded inside, the other brawlers and martial artists inside whimpered and got out of their way, blown aback by the immense speed and strength displayed by Goku. At least his prolonged scuffle against the Pilaf Gang served to accomplish that much…

"Welcome, Fortuneteller Baba has been waiting for you. Please, come in." the Ghost Usher pointed for the opening in the temple wing that led to a long and dark corridor. "The rest of you, please wait for your turn, kindly."

The Ghost Usher floated on ahead, even in total darkness he appeared to possess some unnatural luminescent properties that illuminated the way forward. Chayote was not sure what sort of Earthling creature this floating being was, she had never met anything like him but he did seem similar to those souls she saw back in the Other World.

The corridor led the Saiyans and Upa to another, much larger temple wing, likely the one in the center that appeared the largest of them all. At the very end of the temple wing, standing just beside the exit through which sunshine still beamed inside floated a familiar weathered shape of Fortuneteller Baba. The old lady chuckling, moving around her floating glass ball and approaching Son Goku and Chayote, clearly lacking the proper patience to wait for them to come to her.

"Hello, hello!" she croaked. "I am glad to see you here, Chayote, also, glad to meet you officially, Son Goku."

"Huh, you know my name?" Son Goku pointed at himself.

"I do, now that I know who you are. I must admit, because of the circumstances that led to Chayote's presence in this world, I've led a much more hands-on approach to the situation, ho ho ho!" the woman laughed out.

"Whatever, old hag, you said you had the Dragon Ball for us. We'd like to have that and be on our way." Chayote extended her hand.

"Yeah, old-timer has shrunk himself trying to peek at Pichi-Pichi gals again," Son Goku pointed out. "We need the Dragon Balls to resize him back."

"I see, so my senile brother has gotten himself in a pickle, that's why you need the Dragon Balls…" Baba scratched her chin. Even if she claimed to follow much more fortunes much more closely after the circumstances that put Chayote on Earth, apparently she did not care to check in on her apparent brother from time to time...

"Wha! You and old-timer are brothers!?" Goku yelled out in shock.

"If it's a boy and a girl it's brother and sister." Upa pointed out.

"Yes. Although that is all the time I will spare on that old coot. I am willing to part with my Dragon Ball, I've come to ask my fighters to secure it before someone took it from you and held it for safekeeping." Baba reached out under her black gown and pulled out a Dragon Ball which she put into Chayote's extended hand.

The Saiyan handed it out to Son Goku to put it along with the other Dragon Balls while she patted her hand to her own bottom because of how warm and icky the Dragon Ball felt. There did not seem anything particularly wrong with it, except for the "mental germs" that Chayote imagined it having after being in the pocket of this old lady long enough to get so warm.

"Why would you do that?" Upa wondered. "You don't seem like a very warm and welcoming person, ma'am."

"Oh…" Fortuneteller Baba croaked out before floating up above Upa and pulling on the boy's cheek as grannies did to their little shrimps. "What a cute boy. Yes, indeed I would not go out of my way like that under normal circumstances, however, I'd like to extend a special, one of a kind opportunity which is why I secured the Dragon Ball to get on your good sides."

"Offer?" Chayote wondered. "Given how you did not know all that much about Son Goku, to begin with, I'd assume that offer is for me…"

"Both of you, actually." Baba nodded. "Initially I only intended to reach out to Chayote but after she revealed to me that Son Gohan's little brat is also a Saiyan, well… Having two Saiyans working for me, that's just perfect!"

"Working for you?" Chayote raised an eyebrow. She did not like that one bit. "Sorry, I'll pass…"

"Oh, come now… Don't be that way. It will take a short while until your spaceship is built, correct? You will need something to do, I offer you to serve as one of my fighters and train up here before leaving. Who knows, maybe you'll like it enough to stay for a little bit longer?" Baba haggled.

"That is exactly what I don't want happening. I want to return home and go back to serving King Vegeta and Lord Frieza immediately. I've already wasted too much of my time. These martial arts were interesting but I feel like I'm hitting the wall of what I can learn here. Plus, I can feel my strength and ruthlessness waning each day." Chayote spoke with more investment and frustration than she spoke with ever before, even Goku looked surprised and when she was done, the Saiyan found herself short of breath with her heart racing.

"You're afraid…" Baba stated without even having to glare at her crystal ball. "Right now leaving would be the worst option for you. Stay here and study martial arts under me. At least until the next World Martial Arts Tournament. Then, I promise, you will meet a martial artist who knows martial arts better than anyone you've met yet. A natural prodigy who might still be a far cry from you at the moment but who leaves you in the dust in raw talent. Don't you wish to face him and see that unpolished gemstone?"

"You're setting me up for another disappointment." Chayote shriveled, her hands weighed down. "Just like Korin was. Every day I spend here is a day I could have been training with my peers, serving Lord Frieza, fighting truly powerful opponents and conquering planets. Martial arts teach me a better way to fight but without the strength to match it is useless. No martial artist on Earth is a match for me and Son Goku."

"Who said anything about an Earthling?" Baba's near-toothless mouth twisted. "My array of fighters is full of mystical beings, demons, and devils of all sorts. You will fit right in and I will have a better shot at keeping an eye on you so that your deal with Whis-san is kept and our Universe remains intact. Everyone will profit from this."

"Whis?" Goku wondered, his tail waggled suggesting peaked curiosity. "What deal are you talking about?"

"Why… Chayote came here on Earth after dying, of course. Back on her home planet, she got herself killed." Baba smiled with that crooked smirk only she could muster up. "There is a whole nasty commotion up in the Other World and it turns out that Chayote is a very special kind of Saiyan, a very rare one that must under no circumstances die so she was allowed another chance to live here, where nobody could actually kill her. And yet… She keeps on trying to escape, like an unruly beast busting out of its cage where it is fed, watched over and accounted for."

"What?! Then you absolutely can't leave, Chayote!" Upa grabbed Chayote's thigh and shook it. "If your planet is so mean that it has already killed you once, you have to stay here on Earth!"

"Heh," Goku grinned. "Now when I hear about somebody killing Chayote on her home planet, I'm getting the shivers. I kind of understand why she wants back. Either way, I'd like to train on my own. I still have to toughen up my tail so I'll have to decline your offer, Fortuneseller Baba."

"It's Fortuneteller Baba!" Baba croaked out, shaking her fist over her head. "Oh well, I'll somehow manage without you then. How about it, Chayote?"

"I… I don't know…" Chayote whimpered. All this time she felt so adamant about just putting her spaceship together and blasting off into space but now it all came flooding back, the memories of her death, flashes of them anyway, all the reasons Baba listed why leaving would be a bad idea. She would have been lying if she told herself she was not intrigued to meet those mystical fighters that Baba spoke of or that unpolished gem of martial arts she referred to who would appear in the next World Martial Arts Tournament.

"Tell you what, girl. I won't force you to answer me now. How about you guys fight my five fighters and, if you can win, you'll know better if you want to train here, or not. Plus, I'll give you something very special." Baba extended a shriveled piece of paper with a coffee stain on it that looked barely held together and stapled in the middle.

"What's that?" Goku was about to grab and pull on it when Baba pulled it back and roared out at him.

"Don't touch it, it's very fickle! If you tear it apart again it will be done for! King Enma told me that much when he stapled it back together the first time!" Baba said.

"It's King Enma's?" Chayote wondered.

"Well… I won it from him in a game of cards. It is a Free Return Ticket." Fortuneteller Baba waved it in front of her face. "I've spilled coffee on it once, accidentally cut it alongside the picture in the papers of the pichi-pichi boy I've cut out but it still works."

"What does it do?" Chayote wondered.

"Heh heh heh, I can't help it, with you it would be just too perfect, almost as if I won it exactly for you!" Baba chuckled to herself into her palm. "It allows a soul of the dead person to return back to their body, as long as the cash-in happens within two hours of the time of death. It is an extremely rare item. What will you say?"

"So… If I die back on Planet Vegeta, somebody can use it to bring me back to life once?" Chayote wondered. That was wonderful, if another Saibaman killed her again, instructor Yuca could have used it to bring Chayote back that way and she could give it another shot.

"Oh… I'm not sure about that. It can only be used by giving it directly to King Enma himself and the person who dies loses all their possessions. That means that only someone with access to the Other World can give it to King Enma and cash it in." Baba shrugged. "That means you would have to stay here, on Earth, I could cash it in for you if somebody brings it after picking up from your corpse."

"Fine, let's give it a shot then. It's my turn to fight anyway." Chayote stretched out her shoulder. That was the Saiyan way of solving dilemmas such as the one she found herself in. After facing Baba's five fighters, she would find out the answer for sure!

"Okay, then I'll fight too!" Goku shook his fists "If Chayote loses, then Upa, I'll go right after them!"

Upa went pale. "I… I don't think I'll be fighting… I'm not… Much of a fighter…"

"Don't be shy," Goku smacked Upa's back lightly, nearly tumbling the boy over. "You'll see how fun it is, though if you won't want to, I'll gladly take your turn!"

With an alleviated smile, Upa nodded.


	34. Mummy Goes Ham

Baba floated off through the exit she greeted the party by. Goku, Chayote and Upa followed her into a round arena that looked not too different from the World Martial Arts Tournament arena, except this one appeared to be much older as there were more cracks on the tiles and the materials seemed like they've witnessed the dawn of the last age at the very least. Plus, instead of the audience stands, there was a giant lake surrounding the arena and the rest of the temple past the entrance hall and the main hall.

Chayote did not take long to take her turn. She breathed out and closed her eyes. The stance that Goku took back when facing Pilaf intrigued her. It went against everything that she knew of martial arts and even against the rules of common sense and yet it worked for him. Not just because his opponents were complete dweebs but because it was effective. He was open from all directions and yet it appeared as if he had no openings at all at the same time. There was just no reading his stance.

"Have you fallen asleep? My first fighter is already here, you see…" Baba croaked and chuckled into her hand, likely expecting Chayote to lose her composure.

"Whatever, let him come." Chayote mumbled, her eyes still closed and her stance still non-existent.

"B-But don't you want to open your eyes?" Baba wondered.

"I'm trying something out. If your fighter wants to go first, it's fair game." Chayote shook her shoulders.

"O-Okay… Suke-san please, begin at your leisure." Baba raised her hand up.

"Heh, sure thing!" a voice reached Chayote's ears, it sounded unremarkable and she could feel no impending sense of dread like any notable fighter would emanate. It may have been that Baba just set her up for yet another disappointment, or it may have been that her fighters' abilities were truly as mystical and odd as she had made them believe.

"Hmm? Goku-san, did you see the enemy?" Upa looked at Goku who shrugged in his casual and relaxed state.

"Dunno, maybe he's really small, or something?" Goku replied.

"Watch out, cause here I come!" Suke-san threatened Chayote. The Saiyan just stonewalled her opponent's approach without replying. She just stood there with her eyes closed, trying to relax her body. "D-Don't think that you're going to scare me with your strong and silent routine, even if you did open your eyes, they'd do you no good against me!"

"Suke-san, stop talking, you're wasting your advantage, attack!" Baba scolded her prized fighter who finally got his act together if the thump on the floor was to be believed. After a brief moment of silence, an intense thud followed by an anxious scream and a bunch of grazing noises all over the arena that resulted in the peeking blades of grass bending crushed to the stone floor.

"I give up! I give up!" Suke-san yelled out.

"B-But…" Baba tried to reason with the man but then she just sighed. "You're no longer even here, are you?" She realized.

Chayote opened her eyes. "Oh, sorry, I got so invested into trying to understand Son Goku's stance and fighting style that I blanked out. I forgot to lower my Ki to measure my opponent's strength, can we fight again?"

"Y-You've broken Suke-san's entire arm while standing perfectly still, I don't think that he will want to be anywhere near you. Boy, will the breakfast be awkward…" Baba wiped her sweaty forehead.

"Damn, didn't even get to see your first fighter at all…" Chayote scratched her head. "I'd better keep closer attention."

"Make sure you do, this next opponent will not be beaten by merely standing still! Introducing, Dracula Man!" Baba raised her hands up at the stage, signaling the arrival of a measly bat onto the ring.

"I may not have seen this creature before but I kill dinosaurs all the time, it doesn't seem to measure up." Chayote warned Baba. The last thing she wanted was the woman's five mystical fighters to be a complete disappointment.

A cloud of smoke consumed the bat and from it, a pale and puny boxer landed in front of Chayote. Whereas before she felt underwhelmed by the type of beast that challenged her, now she was disappointed by the volume of this boxer. She had faced countless boxers much thicker than this paled out matchstick back at the World Martial Arts Tournament.

After Baba's signal to begin the fighting, Dracula Man poofed back into a bat and flew off into the air. Chayote stood there and followed the beast with her eyes, Dracula Man was certainly faster than any animal from Earth she had met but this was still disappointing. She heard the poofing sound again, this time behind her, Chayote had hoped that at least her opponent would reveal his true power level by getting this free attack.

"Careful, Chayote! The enemy is behind you!" Upa yelled out, leaning over the arena in worry over Chayote's safety when Dracula Man grabbed her from behind.

"Don't worry, she's always like this. She doesn't try at all to measure your strength and then she uses just a little bit more strength to beat you. She likes fighting that much…" Goku leaned back with a carefree smile.

A sharp sense of pain made Chayote wince in terror. What did that bastard do? Were his puny elbows really that hard-hitting? She felt a warm droplet flowing down her hair and over her forehead too. Something goopy dripped on the ground. Something thick and red. Blood? Her blood!?

"Ha ha ha ha! You've underestimated your enemy at your peril, girl! Dracula Man is known as the Muay Thai Bloodsucker! His ritual dance shows his confidence and pays homage to his long legacy and by consuming your blood, the very essence of your vitality, he also consumes a part of your strength!" Baba croaked out with her fists clenched together. The vision of that gruesome image blurred and multiplied a bunch, Chayote took it into the sky and flipped over on her head, threatening to smash into the arena tiles head-first. Something like that should have killed a puny Earthling such as Dracula Man.

Except when Chayote picked her fallen body off the floor, it was no puny sausage-person that met her eyes, it was a monster of physicality with blood-red eyes, a spine-chilling set of fangs and a body that would have taken a human a thousand years to perfect. Dracula Man had grown at least three times in size and the enigmatic dark and crimson aura leaking out from the mystical fighter made his elongated and even wilder hair flow above him in a supernatural manner.

"That's bad, he absorbed a bunch of Chayote's own strength!" Goku now mirrored Upa's concern whereas the native boy made sure to hide behind Son Goku's back in fear of the reinvigorated demon.

"Usually I dance a ritual dance before a fight but just this once Baba has convinced me to not to do that, instead of focusing on my mystical abilities. I suppose she also switched up our order a bit…" Dracula Man laughed out with a monstrous and husky tone that was very much a new development for him as it sounded quite unnatural imagining it in his older body.

"So what you're saying is…" Chayote mumbled. "If you drain more of my power, say half, we could have a proper clash then?"

"Half of your power?" Dracula Man smirked and looked at Baba with that rich smile, the old hag mirrored his gleeful sentiment.

"Girl, you would die from such excessive blood loss. It does not matter how powerful you are, your body is all the same number of pints of blood worth. Even those matching the Gods in strength would die after a couple of drainages like the one you've experienced." Baba informed Chayote just what was so funny about the whole situation.

"I see…" Chayote clacked her eyelashes a pair of times and allowed her vision to straighten out. That bastard drained out a lot of her strength, he did it in mere moments too. It might not have taken him more than four seconds to drain a body completely dry if he kept the pace up. "Let's see how far you can go with borrowed strength."

Dracula Man charged forward with his knee shot out forward and his fangs uncovered for all to see. Chayote mirrored his motions, his stance, this entire strike of his. Similarly to how Dracula Man borrowed Chayote's strength, she took his fighting style, at least the movements that the pale bastard showed her. A deafening thud followed by a flash of light, as if a thousand lightning bolts detonated at the point of impact all at once came from the clash of the two martial artists.

"Impossible!" Dracula Man roared out, flying back as the loser of the clash of strength. Reading him like an open book, Chayote dived in from above with a kick that sent the vampire crashing into the lake before he could turn back into a bat.

"Even with your strength drained…" Baba yelled out in disbelief.

Chayote stretched out and cracked her knuckles, feeling a bit on wobbly legs after losing a whole bunch of blood. Vision still blurred once in a while, she was lucky not to divekick her way out of the stage herself, missing the enemy altogether.

"You're acting weird, let's switch." Goku raised his hand.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Son Goku?" Chayote looked back at the kid who just laughed out as if he was just caught stealing cookies from his grandpa's jar.

"You got me!" he wiped his itchy nose. Tail waggling by his sides.

"I've made my decision." Chayote declared with a solemn look to her face. "I'll stay and train here. Training with a guy like this will be an invaluable experience, it's the next best thing to training with myself and blood loss like this will trigger my Zenkai to go nuts… Can't wait." She smirked.

"Excellent!" Baba clapped her hands in excitement. "With you, we will make so much mo… I mean… Reach so many new heights in martial arts."

"You do plan on teaching me those mystical martial art ways, do you?" Chayote squinted at Baba, having picked up this particular distrustful mimic from Krillin after seeing it just a few times.

"O-Of course!" Baba laughed out. Even though her laughter could not have felt tenser and more faked, there was little to nothing that could have been done about it and Chayote had the means to persuade the woman to teach her whatever those weirdo fighters of hers knew if she wanted to.

"Say, say… What about me!?" Goku pointed at himself. "I wanna train with the sister of the old-timer too!"

"Hmmm… I must say, your strength is also very intriguing…" Baba scratched her chin.

"No way." Chayote shook her head. "Go find your own training gimmick, Son Goku. If you train with me all that you will achieve in these three years is the same I will but worse. If you are to be of any use to the Saiyans you must stand out in your own way."

"I mean… I wouldn't mind kicking Suke-san out… He's not that impressive of a fighter, to be honest…" Baba butt in.

"Fine. I still need to train my tail and grow much much stronger anyway. Now that I know how you train, Chayote, I'll push my body to the limits every time!" Goku raised his fist as a challenge to Chayote. What he said was more meaningful than just an empty boast, after all, the boy now knew of how Zenkai worked, meaning he will without a doubt wander the world in search of opponents that might bring him to the edge of dying so that he could grow exponentially more powerful. Thinking about that prospect, Chayote could hardly wait.

"I want to stay with Chayote!" Upa declared. "All of these monsters seem really scary but I've made a promise to teach Chayote about good and evil and I intend to keep it!"

"Hohohoho!" Baba snickered. "Very well, I could use an attendant in my mystic rituals."

"Alright then." Chayote punched her palm, "Where the hell is the next fighter? I'm not done yet."

"Oh..." Baba removed her hat and scratched her head. "I had figured that after such a loss of blood you would be in a poor fighting mood, but, I suppose, if you're still gunning for that ticket, we can proceed. The next fighter likes to fight in a different arena, however."

Right after explaining it, Baba hovered onto the fighting stage and led the way deeper into her temples, then down underground and through dark and unkempt tunnels. Chayote had never seen anything this old and untidy. Everything the Saiyans used for their architecture was fresh new, always kept in mint condition because buildings had a nasty tendency to get toppled during the wild fighting and full moon rampages and the Saiyans, as the employees of Lord Frieza himself, used only the finest and most cutting edge construction materials.

"We will turn here, this is the observation area, you can proceed further. The corridor will lead you right to the Devil's Toilet." Baba pointed for Chayote to head further. The Saiyan nodded and proceeded to where the old crone instructed her to, appearing on the very other end of the underground fighting arena. The teen Saiyan looked around, doing her best to hide her curiosity in the marvel of the Devil's Toilet.

It was a spacious room filled a decent amount with bubbling, swampy acid down below. All that separated Chayote and anyone else inside that room from the acid were two massive demon statues that were depicted sitting on a toilet and touching tongues. Those very tongues comprised the fighting stage whereas the observation area appeared from inside the Devil's Toilet as the toilet paper roll.

"Please give it some time, my next fighter is sleeping in before fights and he has not been challenged. Appear now, the Living Hunk of Jerky…" Baba raised her hands up as some mysterious object lit up deep inside the mouth of the demon statue on the other end of the stage.

"Hmmm? You employ someone like that? I can't promise I won't eat him if you don't have enough food…" Chayote wrapped her arms over her chest with a worried expression. Try as hard she might have, she simply could not imagine a man who was described as the Living Hunk of Jerky being all that imposing.

"You fool! I was making a dramatic pause before declaring the man's name!" Baba flipped out and lost her composure, frantically shaking her hands and yelling at Chayote. The loss of concentration over her mystical abilities caused her to drop the coffin that she was about to reveal from inside the mouth of the other statue. The fall made a lifeless giant tumble out of the coffin in a less than dignified, bottoms-up position.

"Oh no, Mummy Man!" Baba screamed out in despair. "Your unmatched, threatening entrance is now ruined, you three, this must not leave this dungeon!" she turned to Upa, Goku, and Chayote.

"Whatever…" Chayote shrugged. "I thought he was called Living Hunk of Jerky…"

"That was his title, you ignorant girl!" Baba flipped out, almost slipping off of her crystal ball and tumbling into the acid below herself. Something that caused the old crone heaps of scares. "His name is Mummy Man, the Living Dead."

"Hmmm…" the downed giant bellowed as he picked his body off the floor. He looked groggy and still a bit in a haze after such a rude awakening. "I do not remember falling asleep on the floor…" he grumbled with a strong and imposing voice. That was much better, as far as threatening appearances were concerned.

"Wait, so is Living Dead his family name? That sounds odd…" Chayote scratched her chin as she observed the slow-starter of a waking giant.

"No, it's another title! He is a living dead-man!" Judging by the appearances, Baba could not stomach the fact that Chayote was more concerned with the name and the logistics of the Mummy Man rather than threatened by his hardcore appearance and supposed strength. "Dying and coming back to life through the mummification ritual has granted him far greater strength than any living man possesses!"

"Baba… What happened to my coffin, I seem to have fumbled out of it," Mummy Man observed after an inspection of the scene of the crime. "Was I sleepwalking again?"

"I'm sorry, Mummy Man, no, this foolish girl has mocked you to the point where I lost composure and dropped your coffin. You sort of tumbled out of it and showed these challengers your undead bottom." Baba explained the shameful situation with a blush to her elderly cheeks.

"What!?" Mummy Man ground his teeth, his pale skin that used to belong to a south-western man of more tanned composure, like Upa and Bora, turned light purple in his fury. "Normally I would be gentle to weaklings that do not belong at this stage, show you the difference between my power and yours and give you the option to run away with your pitiful life but for this… I will grind your bones to dust!"

The undead fighter extended his hand, shooting out the bandages that covered his entire body at Chayote. The white bindings wrapped around the Saiyan and pressed against her body in an instant. There truly was something unnatural about the movements and strength of this man. Normally a man of such an unnaturally powerful and bulky build would be very slow but Mummy Man moved faster than any but the very strongest humans that Chayote had encountered. Had Son Goku fought this man the way he was before Chayote hardened his body up, he'd have lost, without a doubt.

"My bandages are harder than steel! Cry and lament your youthful foolishness and perhaps Baba will give you another try at life as one of her undead warriors!" Mummy Man taunted Chayote who appeared a tad bothered by the hardening bindings of his bandages.

"Oh, no, Mummy Man, she's already going to be one of my fighters. We'll likely be getting rid of Suke-san." Baba pointed it out to Mummy Man.

"Her!?" Mummy Man roared out. "Don't make me laugh! I'll kill her before she can cost you a challenge!"

Mummy Man tried to yoink Chayote closer to him and then pulled on the bandages further in an attempt to throw her off the tongues and down into the acid below but Chayote remained rooted on the floor. With a shocked expression, the undead brute turned to the bound Saiyan. As his steel-hard bandages tore to shreds and Chayote freed herself without too much trouble, the eyes of the Living Hunk of Jerky blanked out and his jaw dropped with an unhealthy twitch to its lower half.

"I got pretty hyped up about you but you seem to be just a guy who fights with power." Chayote stretched out her arms that felt a bit numb after the restriction of movement and blood flow, as brief as it was. "That's fine and all but it's sort of pointless when the enemy has more power and speed than you. Someone like you can never defeat someone like me."

"What was tha…" Mummy Man twisted his face in defiant rage before being silenced by a punch that did not seem to be packing that much weight behind it whatsoever. With a twitch to his frozen body, overcome by unnatural pain and feeling the impending shutting down of his body, the undead brute glared down at where Chayote had approached him from the front and knocked him out with a single hit.

The man's vision of the alien martial artist blurred before his lights went out completely and he collapsed with his face on the floor first and his bottom raised up, although in the other direction this time. The power and toughness combatant Mummy Man had fallen the same way as he was before his rise.

"Bring out your next guy." Chayote looked at Baba and jumped back onto her own side of the stage, landing on the tongue of the first statue.

"Hmmm… Very well but… The next fighter is someone very deadly and dangerous. You are vain, mean and all-around not a pleasant person to talk to. He is a fighter that is very deadly to people like you. Given how useful you will be to me, I will ask that he does not fight you with his full strength but…" Baba tried disciplining Chayote and briefing the girl on the upcoming difficulties but the Saiyan dismissed it.

"You will do no such thing! I want to fight that guy at his most powerful! If I die, you can just mummify me like that Mummy Guy." Chayote dismissed it.

"Mummy Man!" Baba corrected the insolent girl with a raised tone. "In any case, the mummification ritual would result in your brain being pulled out through your nose, meaning that you would be as mindless as Mummy Man himself. Also, while the ritual works for humans, it might actually make someone like you weaker, because of how unnaturally strong you are, to begin with. I would recommend taking caution and not counting on mummification as an option."

"Tsk. Fine…" Chayote wrapped her arms over her chest. "Bandages are kind of lame for an outfit anyway…"

"Okay, at first, I was kind of feeling sorry for you and was on your side but now I just want you to get taught a lesson, Devil Man, come out!" Baba yelled out, signaling for the next fighter to appear.

An inhuman chuckle came from the depths of the room hidden inside the other statue as a pair of blood-red eyes lit up inside it. With light taps, more and more of the unnatural, demonic shapes of the next combatants revealed themselves as Devil Man appeared from the shadows and into the open. Devil Man was a tall man of a pale face and hands and a dark bodysuit covering his entire body except for his face, his hands, and his massive two horns. He also had a pair of wings wide enough for the man to sustain flight, Chayote had no doubt.

"I salute you, girl, you're the first human to have ever gotten this far. Your power is so incredible that I don't even consider you human at all. However… Your luck runs out against me!" Devil Man declared with a cocky gesture at himself with his thumb as he assumed a fighting pose.


	35. The Unexpected Fifth Fighter!

"Begin!" Baba croaked out. The very moment that the fight between Devil Man and Chayote started, the blue devil took it to the air by flapping his wings. His expression was such that it was enough to sell the belief that Devil Man believed himself invincible because of this ability.

The devil blitzed past Chayote, his long and deadly nails pointed at Chayote as if threatening to scoop her eyes out but the blue demon failed to find his mark. He was fast by any standards of Earth, he the strongest Earthling that Chayote had met by a notable margin but he was still far too slow and weak. Then again, Baba seemed to think highly of this man's mystical abilities and Dracula Man turned out to be a gold mine despite being a weakling.

"What's the matter? Watch your step!" Baba shifted her butt cheeks around the crystal ball while waving her hands about like a cheerleader without the puffy arm accessories.

Goku chuckled. Baba looked at the boy in confusion. "I understand that this girl is your superior but do you wish her dead this badly?"

"Chayote can fly too." Goku turned at Baba with an expression that matched that of a deviant who had busted an old lady's window with a rock. "If your guys don't step up, I won't even get to fight…" the boy complained.

"Oh… Don't you worry…" Baba looked back at Devil Man ominously. "I can assure you with complete certainty that Chayote will not win this match, monstrous as she is."

"You annoying gnat!" Devil Man dived at Chayote again. "I'll show you my homeland, Hell!"

Chayote fell backward, throwing her foot up and kicking Devil Man straight in his jaw. The blue demon darted upward and smashed through the ceiling completely. The Saiyan wasn't even trying and she'd already knocked out her opponent, it seemed. Regardless of how disappointing these folks get, that Dracula Man is all the motivation Chayote needs.

"He's out of the stage. Does that mean I win?" Chayote looked at Baba.

"Only if Devil Man is out. Let me check on him." Fortuneteller Baba floated outside the spectator arena and ascended through the hole left by her treasured fighter. One boisterous racket later, Baba appeared through the hole and floated back to the spectator arena while Devil Man appeared through the hole covered with soy sauce, soup and noodles still sticking to his bodysuit and his spiky tail and horns.

"That was amazing!" Chayote whistled with moderate surprise. "I don't think I would survive a kick in the head by someone that much stronger than me."

"Indeed…" Devil Man wiped the tracks of blood off of his face and grinned at Chayote. "It's beyond even the point of a believable bluff that I am stronger than you. To assume so would be foolish, outlandish even. Had it not been for my demonic body, I'd have never recovered from such a blow."

"Okay, so call on the next fighter then?" Chayote bent her head to the side like a puppy. "Even with half my blood drained from my body, after fighting multiple fighters already, you don't pose any threat to me."

"Arrogant? Good… It will blow up right in your face!" Devil Man took an off-putting pose by spreading his arms out to the side and bending them to have his forearms and his hands point to his forehead, right at the roots of his two horns.

"Devil Man! I forbid you to use that move!" Baba screamed out. "If I see even a pink gleam from you, it's back to Hell with you!"

"Tsk… Damn you…" Devil Man straightened his body out and charged at Chayote normally. The man attacked with a wild flurry of claw strikes, his fingers bent inward so that his sharp and lengthy nails inflicted the maximum possible damage. Chayote weaved around the strikes, a tad confused.

"What's wrong? Why didn't you use that move?" she asked the blue devil directly while evading his strikes.

"Because it would kill you, without fail!" Devil Man declared. The most intriguing thing was that the confidence in his voice was without even a hint of bluffing – he truly believed what he was saying. Chayote jumped up and flipped over her opponent like a cannonball, only to land at the other side of the stage, on Devil Man's side of the connecting statue tongues.

"Heh, you're an amazing martial artist, even with our difference in strength, I nearly missed that…" Chayote turned back at her opponent, commending him for the stealthy attempt to trip her up with his tail that she had avoided with her last jump but just as she turned back, Devil Man was right up in her face with a trident in hand.

A quick duck allowed the Saiyan to avoid getting impaled on it and then a grab onto its end held the weapon in place until Devil Man dashed back, surrendering his weapon to the opponent of superior physical strength. He was truly peerless. He was outmatched in every way and yet even while knowing it, every movement Devil Man did was perfect. It was like he had been fighting for hundreds or even thousands of years and has experienced every battle scenario possible. His martial arts skill dwarfed that of any Earthling. There were no wasted movements, nothing unnecessary in Devil Man's moves, it let him somewhat cover the drastic difference in speed.

"You're just amazing." Chayote shrieked out in surprise while tossing the trident down into the pool of acid.

"But of course, I've spent hundreds of years fighting demons in Hell, eventually the rivers of fire and mountains of iron rods began boring me so I've ascended into the mortal realm and won your World Martial Arts Tournament twice." Devil Man bragged, locking his arms over his chest. Even if the blue demon taunted Chayote for being arrogant before, he himself appeared to like other people proportionately to how much they were praising or fearing him.

"I see. It would be an honor training with you!" Chayote placed her fist against her palm and bowed. "I'd like to teach all the martial arts you can teach me in three years."

"Well… It will be a daunting task to be certain but… For such as myself, even turning you into a demon of martial arts will not be outside the realm of possibility. It might take more than a mere three years, however…" Devil Man straightened his back out and scratched his itchy nose with a healthy blush to his pale, demonic cheeks.

"I see… I am thankful, in that case, as for this fight. I surrender." Chayote bowed once more.

"Huh?" Goku leaned in closer on the barrier between the Devil's Toilet and the bystander area.

Fortuneteller Baba chuckled.

"Why? I was under the impression that there was no way for me to win. Initially, I've fostered hopes of throwing you into the pool of acid and winning through ring out, given the difference between our skill, I might have done it even with the different worlds of strength and speed in mind. However, didn't the little shrimp say you can fly?" Devil Man wondered with a satisfied smirk on his face.

"Fortuneteller Baba said you can't use a certain technique, a technique that would kill me, I'm sure of that. Seeing someone as experienced and amazing as you believe it makes me certain as well. It sucks fighting someone who's fighting handicapped so I'm not going to partake in this any further. I'll just assume you'd have killed me if the battle was fair and move on." Chayote explained, looking quite bitter about being unable to experience Devil Man's awesome technique after so much build-up to it. Maybe she'd still get a chance during the three years of training? That would be excellent! Maybe she'd even pick some of it up like she'd picked up bits and pieces of the Kamehameha?

"Ah… I see… That's… I've never heard of a human so pure yet so sinful at the same time. Very well, I'll do my best giving you the training you deserve in these three years." Devil Man smiled, bowing his head a tad in respect to Chayote's sportsmanship.

"'Scuse me, could you fly off back to your side? I'm here to fight!" Goku's voice distracted and frightened the demon who just shriveled back and then jumped to the corner of the ceiling, covering the distance with a single leap and a few flaps of his wings.

"H-How did you get behind me like that, you little imp!?" Devil Man exclaimed. "My instincts are meant to be second to none!"

"Heh, I'd be careful if I was you, Devil Man. This boy here is of the same race as Chayote, he's still a bit fresh so he's weaker than her but his inhuman physiology is not to be underestimated." Baba got a chuckle out of the whole situation. Devil Man landed in front of Goku while Chayote removed herself from the fighting stage. She'd have liked her skirt to have pockets to put her hands in when she retreated in shame and self-reflection but Dr. Brief was probably worried about his staff stealing stuff from him because it had none.

"Hmph… Is this kid also protected by the Otherworld?" Devil Man looked at Baba with a scornful look.

"Well… He is a Saiyan and he's very talented… Oh well… We have one Saiyan anyway, I say I'm leaving it to the boy. Do you want Devil Man to use his ace hidden technique or do you want to live some longer?" Baba looked at Goku.

"Stop messing around!" Goku raised his clenched fist. "I wanna see that technique right now!"

"Very well… The Universe will not get destroyed if this boy dies, plus, Chayote's got the Dragon Balls with her and the idea of my younger brother staying a tiny speck of dust for a little while longer is too priceless. Explode away…" Baba gestured a hand-washing motion with her old and withered hands. This only brought an evil smirk onto Devil Man's face as he took the same curious stance he used against Chayote earlier, just before Baba forbade him to use that technique on her. Chayote felt lucky to have gotten to the observer area just in time to see this technique from the VIP seats.

"Prepare yourself, brat, I will show my true strength against you!" Devil Man smirked and showed off his fangs. Even if this man was nothing to brag about in the physical strength department, there was something freaky in the way he smiled.

"Even the most sweet-faced, do-gooders have just a crumb of evil in their hearts. It is my most revered ability to locate that evil and expand it, expand it, expand it - until it explodes!" Devil Man declared in the stance that terrified Baba earlier when he was about to use this move on Chayote.

"Begone with the might of the Devil Mite Beam!" Devil Man shrieked out as he pointed his fingers forward, a tiny, pink spark flared in between his fingers and conjoined into a singular beam that rotated in a twisted spiral before coming at Goku.

"Just dodge it!" Chayote yelled out. She had no want or need in Son Goku dying. She wanted to think that it was solely because of the fact that he was a Saiyan and therefore both a worthy training partner, unlike any others on Earth. Now, however, when she found those freaks and devils who may have proved to be more beneficial to train against at the moment, Chayote felt a bit confused by the fact she still did not want Goku to die. Saiyans were never ones for native solidarity…

"No use!" Devil Man chuckled, "My beam homes in on all evil!"

Goku took a light jump backward, the beam slammed against the tongue of the statue and then evaporated in a cloud of pink smoke. This taught a hard-hitting lesson that lifeless demon statues had not the tiniest specks of their real-life counterparts' evil in them.

"Wha!?" Devil Man dropped his jaw and popped out his eyes in a very undignified manner.

"Th-The boy must not have a drop of evil in him…" Fortuneteller Baba coughed out.

"N-No! That's impossible! Nobody's completely pure of heart!" Devil Man gestured at Baba with his clenched fist. "This must be… Yes… Something must have gone wrong… I must have messed something up executing the move. Prepare yourself for the Ultimate Move of Absolute Death, brat. Here comes my second Devil Mite Beam!"

Once more the blue devil repeated his Devil Mite Beam, the rotating spiral hit Goku head-on this time, the boy did not even attempt to avoid it this time. He likely has already realized that Baba was right – the reason why the beam did not track him last time was that he was pure of heart. The beam could not find an ounce of evil to home in on.

Emphasizing Baba's theory, the pink glow gleamed and sparked, burst and then poofed away, leaving not a single scratch on Goku's body. The Devil Man stumbled back, judging from the look on his face, his entire world view was shaken at first, now the table was flipped completely.

"M-Monsters…" a literal demon muttered. "These brats are… Complete monsters…"

"What was that all about?" Goku looked at Devil Man half-irritated, half-befuddled. "Your technique just disappeared."

"Perhaps the Devil Mite Beam was not able to defeat you but… You're weaker than that girl from before, against you I must stand a cha…" Devil Man was doing his best in dealing with the bad hand he had before Goku's stray kick hit him right in the gut with the boy standing right next to him. The jaws of the blue demon protruded outward as he struggled to find the strength to breathe right.

"You're leaving yourself way too open and talking too much…" Goku rested his head on his crossed hands while he jumped back to his half of the tongue. "Oh well… I won…"

Goku took his sweet time giving Fortuneteller Baba and Chayote his peace signs while the old lady shook her head and glared at the shadowy embrace in the mouth of the second demon.

"I've acquired a very special fifth fighter," Baba smirked while looking at Goku. "It must be fate since I've expected Chayote to be the one fighting him… This just seems all too poetic."

"Now you're going on and on too…" Goku pouted his lips. "I've only got one more fighter left to beat, bring 'im out!"

"Eager? Very well, because you have never met a warrior like the fifth champion. Tell you what, little Goku, if you can beat him, I will do something nice for you too, given how you've put in much more impressive work than Chayote, withstanding the Devil Mite Beam and all." Baba threw in the hook. "Now, the time has come! Come out, your peer and superior, a fellow Saiyan – Raditz!"

A teenage Saiyan leaned under the lines of demonic, stone teeth and appeared from the shadows. He was chewing on something meaty and spat the chunk of fish's liver aside before throwing the entire gigantic tuna that he held in his hand aside and letting it land into the acid below.

"Huh? H-Hi… You're a Saiyan too?" Goku pointed at the teenage Saiyan who looked a tad similar to him in terms of his facial features although his face was much flatter and had all-around sharper edges around the chin and his cheekbones, the otherworldly fighter also had a widow's peak and long, dark hair and a nimbus floating over his head.

"H-Hey, Goku, mind if we switch?" Chayote leaned against the edge of the audience area.

"No fair! You gave up already! This fight's all mine!" Goku shook his clenched fists in a childish fit of rage.

"Sh-Shit… This isn't like anything that the Korin's water showed me… The Saiyans were supposed to arrive much later!" Chayote bit her lip in frustration. This was bad! Goku stood no chance against this young man if he truly was a Saiyan trained and raised on Planet Vegeta.

"This place is stupid. I want to fight outside." Raditz mumbled, still chewing some remains of the fish he had tossed aside earlier. "I wanna kick Kakarot's ass thoroughly, in here he'll just escape by plunging into the acid."

"Kakarot? That's a… Saiyan's name…" Chayote mumbled to herself. She then looked at Goku. "Kakarot… That's his REAL name."

Raditz looked at Chayote with a stray glance. "I see… So you're the Saiyan they've actually sent here to eradicate the puny humans. Not like Kakarot whom our parents cast aside to protect him because he was a little weakling."

"Our parents?" Chayote raised an eyebrow. "You're Son Gok… Kakarot's brother?"

"That's right." Raditz nodded with his arms crossed over his chest. "When I found out that my parents sent Kakarot away, worried that he'd get himself killed if Frieza tested him, I tried following him to Earth. Prince Vegeta didn't take kindly to my attempt at running off by myself and blew my shuttle up. I'm dead because of you, Kakarot!"

The Saiyan looked proper pissed at the indifferent and very puzzled boy in front of him. A vein popped out on Raditz's forehead when he took a meaty step forward and shook his fist in front of himself, Chayote could almost feel the dense bending of air around it, this young man had power, there was no question about it.

"When Baba came looking for her fighters, I sent her to piss off, at first. Even when she said I'd be fighting another Saiyan I was only half-interested. Then, she came back and told me that I'd also get a chance to meet you and, if I won, your life would be in my hands. That was all that I needed to hear, Kaka…" Raditz postured and went on before Goku charged at him with a punch. A punch that met its match and superior in Raditz's grasp.

An elbow strike sent Goku packing back into the head of the statue he came out from, blasting the head into smithereens from the sheer force of impact.

"This guy's strong. Leagues stronger than I was when I first came on Earth. Even if we fought now, it would not be a walk in the park for me." Chayote assessed what she saw in thought. She then turned to Goku who still laid in the pile of rubble on the other side. "I've trained him a fair bit. He's stronger than he'd have ever been training by himself with the weaklings on Earth. There's no way he'd be done in by a strike like that…"

Almost like prompted, Goku burst from the pile of rubble and wiped the blood off of his cracked lip with a smirk of excitement.

"I see what you meant. Please, take this outside, you two…" Baba pleaded, waving her hands.

"I can hardly wait, Kakarot…" Raditz smiled, widening his eyes in a smug and threatening expression.

"My name's Son Goku, not some Kaka-whatever…" Goku growled. Showing surprising restraint, the monkey-boy turned around and walked out through the demolished head of the statue and into the clearing that led back to the audience area. From there it would have been a short walk outside.

Despite the simplicity in directions and the brief path to be walked, the tension in the air could not have made it any feel any less like it was sheer light-years away.


	36. Brotherly Love

Goku stared on ahead at the marble road leading up to the outside arena. His expression might have been the least goofy one of those which Chayote has seen him take. He almost looked Saiyan like this which was summoning chills all over Chayote's skin. She had not yet seen this Raditz fight but he was sure to demand everything that Goku had to give out of him.

"This is so wrong! He's your brother, aren't you the least happy to see him? Especially since he's been dead before now!" Upa ran up to Goku and got a step ahead of him. It seemed as if though the boy pleaded him to act in a manner more befitting two reunited brothers.

"Right now I have to fight him." Goku cut it short. Not letting the chuckle that peeled Chayote's lips open from inside out demanded about as much physical effort as an exhausting fight. Now Goku looked and acted like a true Saiyan, Chayote almost missed the dumbass goofball she had to extract this current boy from.

She was not the one who has summoned Kakarot out of Son Goku but she liked to think that she played a part in that.

"Raditz will only remain here on Earth for a day. That's about as long as my magic can keep them here on Earth. Obviously, summoning his true strength requires some of my magic too so if he lets loose too bad… His return might not last for even that one day." Baba smirked. Chayote could see it, while Baba was not too certain about that last part, judging from her tone, the crone had not the smallest doubt in her mind that if someone might have made that a factor – it was a true Saiyan such as Raditz.

"Oh well… At least Goku can still talk to his brother the next time he comes back. But if they don't make up, Raditz might not want to come back again…" Upa scratched his tummy with worried eyes.

"Heh… I might as well start teaching you this now but… There are rules to this universe. Rules that are not to be broken because they cannot be bent or broken but because there are those that watch over them who aren't pleasant to deal with. A lot of figures up there don't feel too excited about me just bringing people back to life, even if it is just for one day. The deal we've reached with those figures is that I only bring people back once." Baba explained. Chayote glanced back, using half of her attention to keep track of the conversation just because of how greatly it evaluated the Free Return Ticket.

Goku and Raditz stepped onto the round stage and took their positions at the other end of the arena. Goku adopted his usual, grumpy yet cool, completely open yet not an inch left undefended stance whereas Raditz just crossed his arms over his chest and flapped his tail about, sneering at Goku as if imagining all the gruesome ways he would beat his brother down with.

"What do you think? Could you beat him?" Fortuneteller Baba leaned closer to Chayote.

"Until they clash with full power, I won't be able to tell." Chayote shrugged.

"So green…" Baba shook her head. "We'll have to change all of that. My brother was always so proud of his own students. It's time I leave him in the dust!"

"Come on then, Kakarot! The sooner we start, the sooner I can get to my satisfaction!" Raditz grimaced while clutching his fist in front of him and wrapping his tail around his waist.

"Not yet. Fortuneseller Baba still hasn't said go." Goku replied without losing an ounce of his cool.

"It's Fortuneteller!" Baba shook her fist up while yelling loud and hard enough to almost fall off her floating crystal ball. "Also, you may begin."

Raditz charged just as the final dot emphasized the end of Baba's declaration. Goku raised his hand up and blocked his opponent's charge that intended to hit him square in the head and stun him. A hit in the head from one's forearm was dangerous and powerful but it was far too reckless to use it so early in a fight when the enemy had every bit of their perception intact. A shockwave spread from the point of collision with the two young Saiyans gritting their teeth and clashing in a struggle of strength.

"He's fast and strong." Chayote noted. "The way I arrived here on Earth, without any martial arts training, I'd have struggled against him."

"Do you think Goku can win then?" Baba turned to Chayote as the two Saiyans grunted and yelled at each other, neither one surrendering their quest to overpower the other.

"I don't think he's as strong or as fast, but he knows far more about martial arts. If Kakarot plays Raditz's game, he's done for, if he forces Raditz to play his – he'll win for sure." Chayote smirked, she had seen a similar scenario run down multiple times in the World Martial Arts Tournament she participated in with the other participants who were far more skilled than her but failed to compare in might.

Goku let Raditz win the struggle by suddenly halting his resistance and then falling backward, once Raditz lost his balance, he kicked his brother up into the air, taking almost no time to pursue Raditz as well. The older Saiyan sibling extended his hands downward, unleashing a downpour of Ki blasts that whited out the entire surrounding in their intense glow. Goku blitzed around them, almost as if he knew where and when each blast would come at him as he turned in mid-air without any flying skill to aid him just fast and precise enough to dodge the tiny blasts. Goku's head dug deep into Raditz's gut making the elder brother groan in pain and white-out momentarily.

"Ka… Me!" Goku cupped his hands by his sides as the two brothers resumed their free-fall after reaching the highest point in the sky. It was a reckless idea to try and blast Raditz with a Kamehameha point-blank but at least he had the benefit of leaving the enemy dazed for a blink. This was the only way he'd land anything this cumbersome and powerful on somebody ahead of him in terms of speed.

"Ha-Me! HA!" Goku extended his hands, blasting Raditz with a beam of white and blue energy. Vision only returned back to Raditz's eyes at the very last second, just enough for a simple blocking attempt but nowhere near what would have been necessary to avoid the blast or otherwise deal with it. Goku had learned a lot about fighting stronger and faster opponents after training with Chayote for so long.

With minor cracks on his armor and bruises over his exposed arms and thighs, Raditz landed back down and broke his blocking stance. This was the inevitable reality of being outmatched – you may have pulled off a clever move or two, but you'd only succeed in reducing the gap between you and the enemy and not pulverizing them as one might normally beat a lesser foe.

"Heh… I've no idea how this puny planet could have gotten you this far. I've underestimated you, Kakarot." Raditz smirked, even after taking a point-blank Kamehameha he still maintained his act as the smug and superior older sibling. "However, whereas you're just a lucky prodigy, I, on the other hand, am a Saiyan Elite!"

Raditz blurred and disappeared. Goku lost his cool, he broke his stance because the speed of his opponent caught him completely by surprise. With a crushing elbow strike, the older Saiyan brother appeared behind his younger sibling and sent him down. Goku's cry of pain and broken expression made Upa run up to the stage and lean against it, the little shrimp thought of waltzing right onto it and getting all up in Raditz's face but the mean and murderous look of the enemy froze the boy in his tracks.

"He could have eliminated Kakarot like that…" Chayote mumbled. "If he attacked him upfront, hit him straight in the jaw or the chest, sent him flying. That's not what Raditz is here for, however. He's not going to eliminate Kakarot, he's going to kill him, one punch at a time."

"Does it bother you?" Baba looked at Chayote with an intrigued look, her lower lip hanging and her few remaining bottom teeth exposed.

"It does. I've invested too much time into Kakarot to lose him, especially to a nobody who's going to back to being dead after killing him. Kakarot is a treasured asset of mine, he's not much, but he's all I've got." Chayote gulped. She now knew how Goku's band of pals felt when watching him fight, worried but powerless to help him. She didn't like it one bit.

"Tsk… Don't you dare pass out just yet, Kakarot! You've not suffered nearly enough to make-up for getting your brother killed!" Raditz grunted and extended his hand forward, his Ki traveled differently now, invisible and much slower but it manifested in a thunderous blast that blew bits and pieces of the arena underneath Goku while sending the seemingly unconscious boy up from the shockwave.

Using the fact that his brother was in his eye-level now, Raditz dashed behind Goku again and aimed to kick him in the back, just to bounce his little brother off of the stage floor like a football and prevent him from being ringed out by the shockwave throwing him off the arena. Chayote grunted in frustration, she could almost hear the bones in Goku's body churn and crack when his body bounced off of Raditz's foot and then off the floor again, firing off into the complete opposite direction like a skyward arrow.

Raditz dashed in and above his little brother with a double axehandle smash to send him crashing back down in a diving angle that would have smashed him into the ground and made him stay down and in his brother's mercy. The cruel intention of the vengeful brother went off without a hitch, Goku without uttering a word or even shouting in pain smashed into a hole of his own making, sending bits of the tiles and dirt flying off into all directions.

"Shit… I hope I didn't crash him deep enough for a ring out, did I?" Raditz glared at Baba. Everybody knew this was a rhetorical question, Raditz would keep fighting regardless of the answer.

"He listens to you?" Chayote raised an eyebrow, feeling impressed by her future teacher.

"He has no choice. It is my magic that keeps him here for the moment. He hates my guts for sure, as he does for most things and people, but right now I'm the only key for his much-desired revenge." Baba chuckled into her tiny and wrinkled hands.

Raditz permitted himself the distraction of sneering at Baba, imagining thousands of painful ways he could end the old crone but knowing full-well that if he was to continue his revenge and then have a tolerable afterlife, he'd never let any of those daydreams come true.

"Damn…" Goku grunted and rubbed the top of his head while he scrounged himself back on his buttocks and did his best to regain a sense of balance. His gi was torn in places and dirtied, his hair hung limply by his side while the areas of exposed skin such as his arms and his face bled and gleamed with bruises.

Despite the damaged state of the boy, Chayote felt relief when he picked himself up. Even Raditz had to pay some respects. In his own, Saiyan kind of way. The older brother stood proud with his arms crossed and his eyes closed, chin raised high but he was not fooling anybody about the fact that he did feel an ounce of respect for his brother for taking this punishment and standing back up.

"Well, well… I guess you're not as useless as I've thought. Tell me though, Kakarot, with this power level you should have conquered this planet long ago, what gives!?" Raditz confronted his brother.

"Because I like it here, because all of my friends live here." Goku dragged his fist over his lower jaw and took a fighting stance.

"Friends? You've made allies alongside Earthlings?" Raditz thundered out with laughter. Just in that one moment of hilarity, all traces of murderous intent behind him faded away. The moment of joy could not have lasted any shorter, however.

"What's so funny about that!?" Goku growled out.

"Of course, conquering the Earth was not why our father sent you here but you could not have known that. For all you knew, your Saiyan nature should have taken over and you should have taken charge of this planet. You shouldn't have been able to help it – you're a Saiyan, it's in your blood. Someone strong must have hit you in the head when you were a child. I can't help but laugh imagining you as a toddler getting your shit kicked in by what amounts as a warrior by Earthling standards." Raditz did his best to calm himself while explaining it.

Chayote bit her lip. She wanted to advise Goku to grab Raditz's tail and then beat him senseless or fling him out of the ring and then have Baba deal with his temper tantrum. However, Raditz was much stronger and faster than Goku, that much was certain. If she said it to Goku out loud, Raditz might get the right idea as well. While grabbing the tail of another Saiyan would be considered fighting dirty by Saiyan standards, Raditz was not here for a clean and fun fight, he was here to punish Goku for a reckless mistake he himself made.

"Old lady, can you talk in people's minds like Muten Roshi?" Chayote looked at Baba.

"It isn't an ability I use too often but I can, yes." Baba stroke her chin.

"I need you to relay something to Kakarot." Chayote nodded her head, prompting the old woman to read her mind. Baba's stare turned sharper and she chuckled. Just like somebody that would have known what Chayote was thinking about would have laughed out.

"Okay… I will do that. I might be helping the enemy here but, truth be told, seeing this Raditz peeing his pants a little bit might be worth it." Baba cringed into her hand before composing herself and glaring at Goku. The contact went through, for a second the two remained perfectly frozen but then Goku glared back at the fortune-teller and sent her fumbling back and very nearly slipping off her floating crystal ball.

"H-He said he won't do something like that. He's going to fight fair." Baba explained while climbing back onto the crystal ball, Upa helped her by pushing her back up by her bottom. "Thank you, young man." Baba nodded in gratitude.

Goku spread his legs out as wide as his shoulders and pressed his hands by his sides. The wind picked up in the surrounding area, breaking around an invisible barrier shaped as a perfect sphere around Goku. Even if she could not sense Ki in a confident manner, other than an unnatural sixth sense that most martial artists possessed, Chayote could swear she saw Goku shimmer with Ki he was bursting with.

"Wh-What insane power!" Baba grabbed her cheeks. "To think that this boy has been holding back this whole time!"

"He was?" Chayote turned to Goku looking baffled.

"I'm done fighting for sport, I'm using my real power now!" Goku declared to Raditz.

"Hmph, interesting, come," Raditz smirked. His tail took off of his waist and began waggling behind him.

Goku leaped at his opponent, covering the distance between them in a flash. Raditz put up his hands and blocked his brother's dashing elbow strike but Goku took a plunge down and swept at Raditz's legs by using his arm for support. Having lost his sense of balance, Raditz slipped up, at which point Goku pushed his body off of the ground, repurposing his supporting hand for a good push and kicked his opponent up by jolting his opponent square in the lower back.

The Saiyan boy switched stances and dashed in pursuit of his opponent but Raditz recovered faster than Goku counted on and bashed his brother back down with another double ax handle slam. In mid-air, Raditz extended both of his hands out and charged up two purple energy spheres, firing one of the spheres as an energy wave at Goku. Once Goku resolved to block it, Raditz aimed the other one and unleashed it as well.

"Kakarot!" Chayote yelled out, leaning over the stage, ready to engage Raditz herself but the sight of Upa doing the same by her side broke the flashes of red in her eyes and returned her to reality. Seeing something madder than she was in that moment – a puny Earthling boy running at Raditz gave her a strong boot back down. Chayote grabbed Upa and pulled him off the stage while he bashed about in her grip.

"What's wrong with you!? We need to help him!" Upa kept crying out.

"We can't. He might not have lost yet. He'd never forgive us if we interfered and made him lose." Chayote put Upa down and bent to his level to look him in the eyes.

"That ticket… Is it really this important? Is it really worth all of this?" Upa shook his head, sniffling.

"Honestly, not really." Chayote smiled. Seeing how Upa blanked out and took a step back horrified she went on. "Although this has long since stopped being about that. Raditz wants to beat Kakarot down to an inch of his life, Kakarot doesn't want to lose to him. They're just two warriors fighting each other, there's no purpose in their minds other than this fight itself but to a Saiyan that's the greatest purpose there is."

As the smoke cleared, Goku's grunts informed the bystanders that the darker figure in the clouds of picked up dust was indeed him. The Saiyan boy had managed to catch himself in mid-fall and prevent a ring-out by grabbing the edge of the ring with his teeth. The top of his gi was blown off and in tatters, his mouth and his face were busted open but Goku kept wriggling and struggled back into the ring. He might not have had enough strength to go after Raditz immediately, only managing to stretch himself out by the edge of the ring and huff at the sky, but he was still in the game and that was enough.

What was not enough, apparently, was Goku's full power. While the fact that Goku was holding some of his power back the whole time, fighting for the sportsmanship of it and not in the kill or be killed mode that fighting deserved to be taken as. The additional power-up only barely reduced the difference between him and Raditz. It was no miracle power-up that the supporting cast had expected it to be.

"Kakarot…" Chayote mumbled. She did not envy the boy's situation, he had thrown everything he had at his brother and found himself lacking still. All hope was not yet lost, all it would have taken was one unorthodox martial arts trick and he might have pulled off a cheap blow or ringed Raditz out but… "This is the fight that will close the gap between us, I'm sure…" Chayote smirked.

A challenge like this was exactly what she was craving for this whole time. Seeing Goku claw and bite his way through the fight, brought to his very limits made Chayote shiver, imagining the might he'd rise to after such a battle. Seeing Goku writhe and pick himself up off the ground, preparing to continue and end this battle between brothers made Chayote wonder if he perhaps knew it too, or if this was all instinct. Was he thinking about anything at this point or just letting his body do what it was born to do.


	37. Life Ticket on Edge! Shenron Summoned!

"Heh, it's like you have a craving for punishment or something… Not that I'm complaining, that's why I came back to life, to begin with!" Raditz placed his hands by his sides and unleashed all of his Ki, appearing as if though he's finally done holding back. Of course, he would have held back, in the beginning, Goku was weaker than him to an extent where full power might have killed him too soon.

Somewhere down the line, Raditz's little brother might have strengthened himself while battling to where he still was not strong enough to win but at least strong enough to take it.

Goku flashed up to his opponent, performing a devastating cross chop at his opponent's neck area, one that Raditz raised his hands to block but before he could meet Goku's force with superior defenses of his own, Goku's image blurred.

"Afterimage!?" Chayote widened her eyes in surprise. She had seen the Afterimage Technique used defensively before, it was a convenient way to bail one out of a tough situation against a reckless or sloppy opponent with too much power and speed on their hands than they knew what to do with. Leave it to Goku to invent new ways in which techniques could have been used.

Goku blitzed down to Raditz's shins and tripped his brother over, spinning on one arm while sweeping his brother. The boy repurposed his body weight, pushing his body off of the ground on that same supporting arm, moving like a drill with his feet as the edge and smashing into the enemy. Raditz swiped with his backhand. Surely he should have been fast enough to not let Goku gain any more momentum after being shut down.

The Saiyan boy blurred out again, Raditz grunted in pain while his eyes blanked out, Goku's foot dug into his back when the monkey boy moved behind his opponent, leaving an afterimage for Raditz to work with. It was an amazing plan, Goku knew his opponent was faster, meaning he'd be able to keep up and interrupt his attacks with effortless efficiency but if he thought he knew what was going on, when in fact he had Goku's wool over his eyes – that was a whole different deal entirely.

Raditz shot up into the air. Goku cupped his hands by his side. "Ka! Me!" he yelled out. With Raditz up in the sky, he'd have had few options to dodge a Ki beam coming right at him. Had Goku pursued the enemy, he'd have only met another one of Raditz's own Ki blasts, just like he got had before.

"Die, you fool!" Raditz grunted, recovering in mid-flight, just like it could have been expected of him. The elder Saiyan warrior extended both of his hands, unleashing a simultaneous, purple Ki beam from each of his hands. Where before he used this attack in a cleverer way, using the first beam to make the enemy open up for the second one, now he had resolved himself to just power through.

The beams slammed right at the ground, blowing up half of Baba's ring. The old crone grabbed her hat and wrapped her arms and feet over her crystal ball, the ball went completely haywire too. She looked like a cowboy riding a wild animal. Seeing Upa cowering in front of the old lady, too short to protect her from the blast, Chayote slowly stepped up in front of them both and let her body take the brunt of the shockwave while all that the bystanders got was a little, mean backdraft.

Raditz huffed in mid-air. Sweat drenched his forehead. One of his eyes looked heavy and wanted to close, just let the warrior snooze a little. His Ki attack was a desperation move, troubled over Goku's martial art maneuver, the enemy lashed out and moves fueled by rage consumed the absolute most of the wind in one's lungs. Just like he had to, Goku was fighting smart. Now. Now Raditz was ready for the finishing blow.

Once the smoke cleared, a blurry image of Goku floated above a crater that Raditz's blast had created out of the one half of the arena. A sharp whistle in the air telegraphed the sudden re-emergence of Goku with a charging Kamehameha right up in Raditz's face. "Ha-Me…!" He used both the Kamehameha and the Afterimage at the same time. It was taxing but Goku was not fighting for the long game now, there was no long game in his case – he was going for the finish right then and there.

"Ha!" Goku thrust both of his hands forward, Raditz was wheezing and panting too much from his earlier blast that should have wiped all traces of his little brother together with his strongest Ki blast. Raditz covered up his face out of instinct. Goku's roaring Kamehameha erupted from his cupped hands and threatened to blast Raditz back to the Otherworld all of its own, so high up, the beam did not even threaten one of Baba's buildings. A nice touch from a sentimental Saiyan warrior, Chayote thought…

"Wha!" Goku cried out. His Kamehameha died out in a whimpering, azure beam before puffing off in a cascade of weak smoke clouds. The reason for the sudden death of his technique revealed itself once Raditz emerged behind Goku with his brother's tail in his grip.

"Fool me once, that's a nice trick, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me thrice… Your trick is as good as mine." Raditz smirked. Chayote did not think it was a well-performed Afterimage whatsoever, seeing how he did not even produce one. Still, the basic concept of a massive influx of Ki enhancing one's Ki circulation and erupting in awesome speed all in one instance… He kind of had that part covered.

"He copied Goku's move!" Upa grabbed his cheeks in horror.

"I've excelled at so many of your Earthling tricks that I've come to forget that I'm in no way special. Raditz is nowhere near the prodigy of adopting and perfecting the moves of other martial artists that Kakarot is but… He's still a Saiyan warrior." Chayote sighed. She simply did not see a way in which Goku could have won at that moment.

Raditz pulled Goku in on his tail, only to bash at his face, his body, using him like a ball of a bounce-back paddle. It was a crude attack although it was nothing if not effective. Goku looked completely powerless being manhandled by his brother like that. Everything he threw, every genius plan he came up with, it all came up short. No matter how clever Goku fought, how much of an advantage he gained by making Raditz make a dumb mistake, his opponent compensated for the loss of Ki in spades once he got his hands on Goku.

There were some differences in power and speed that mere skill could not cover. Was this how it would be once the Saiyans come to Earth, whether they come in search for Kakarot or if they come here to claim this planet for Lord Frieza? Is Chayote just wasting her time learning the martial arts and the mystic ways of the Earthlings while the Saiyans fight the mightiest challengers in all of the galaxies and end up almost getting themselves killed daily? What if it is all for naught?

"This is over… And after Goku pulled out all of his hidden reserves and surpassed his limits…" Baba sighed. "I'll hate seeing that cocky boy leave the world of the living content…"

"Surpassed his limits?" Chayote looked at Baba. "What do you mean? Is such a thing even possible?"

"Heh…" the Fortuneteller chuckled. "You really should not have skipped out on my pervy brother's training. Breaking through the limit of humanity and transcending into something more than just human is the essence of his teachings. Training in martial arts is a continuous struggle against limits just like the limit of one's own humanity. Every limit can be broken, however, that doesn't mean they should be."

"What do you mean? If there's a way to endlessly power-up, why isn't Kakarot doing it over and over again?" Chayote turned to Baba. At that moment she almost knew that the hope that was bursting forth in her chest was false and would soon become bitter.

"That's what he tried to do. Breaking one's limits demands so much from somebody, special conditions, special kind of willpower… It doesn't last long because the limits are there for a reason and then the fighter ends up losing so much Ki in the end that it doesn't even matter in the end. It is not a wise strategy, it is a desperation move, a battle cry for those who have accepted death already." Baba explained while watching Goku getting bounced off and back of Raditz's fist in the air.

"Rage? You mean rage can trigger it? Of course… That much I can understand!" Chayote looked back up at Goku. That was it… He looked as good as dead already, even if he did break through his limiters again, this time employing rage instead of willpower… What good would it all amount to?

"Wanna see?" Baba looked at Chayote with malicious eyes and then placed her shriveled hands by her mouth. Then the old lady took a deep breath and emptied her bloated body of all the air in a single shout. "Hey, shrimp, if you won, I'd have let you meet your grandfather!"

"Grand… Grandpa…" Goku whimpered out, his face looked positively hammered in and he was already stiff from the endless cascade of blows but the revelation had managed to ignite a tiny spark of life back into him.

"Heh, don't you worry, little brother, I'll let you meet your fake, Earthling grandfather down in Hell!" Raditz mocked his weakened brother.

"No good…" Baba lowered her hands and sighed. "Even if little Goku could summon some superhuman resolve to power himself up, that cosmic scorn still has his tail. Whatever strength comes up, it is all getting sapped away."

Pop.

A twitching tail remained in Raditz's clutch while Goku's lifeless body took a plummet responding to the direction his body got blown at when Raditz bounced Goku around. The boy's life reignited mid-fall, he cupped his hands by his side and pushed them at the direction of the arena. "Kamehameha!" he roared out while a weak beam of azure blasted out from his hands, propelling Goku upward and right at Raditz.

"Ngh! Where is this energy coming from!?" Raditz freaked out and tossed the dying off tail, still in his hands, to his side. From the casual manner in which the Saiyan warrior avoided his brother's headstrong charge, it seemed like he needed no effort whatsoever to confront whatever willpower-driven assault Goku was putting out.

"Grandpa!" Goku roared out while his leg hooked Raditz's arm and swung his body over it while delivering a hook headed straight for his brother's belfry. With the daze in the eyes of the elder Saiyan brother muddling his vision and capability of response, Goku wrapped both his legs around his brother's neck and began pounding away at his face with hammer-fists while the two brothers crashed down.

"Just an inch to the side and Raditz would have gotten himself ringed out at where he himself blasted the arena. What a poetic end it would have been…" Baba chuckled to herself, she appeared to be somewhat entertained by how badly things were going to Goku. Usually, luck tended to favor the underdogs in such scenarios, the old lady must have seen it a dozen times but, this time, it seemed like luck was just out to get Goku. "Well… It seems you might just have to use those Dragon Balls to bring your friend back and not to aid my perverted brother, would have been a waste of a wish anyway, if you asked me…"

"Ch-Chayote, you… You can't let Goku die!" Upa cried out. "That's what good people do! They help their friends, no matter how much it inconveniences them!"

Chayote stared at Raditz who wrapped his hunky thighs over Goku's throat and slammed the body down onto the ground, beginning to choke his brother out. Whatever second wind Goku was under after hearing about his grandfather waiting to meet him was now gone. It went away straight after the few seconds of beating that Goku delivered on Raditz in the air. One thing that derailed the train of Chayote's thoughts was when Raditz just let go of Goku and stood back up.

Despite having every opportunity to snap his brother's neck or just choke him out, the Saiyan warrior returned to his feet but it was not to show his little brother mercy. It was to drag his fist over his forehead, a place that felt wet and cool and, once the elder Saiyan brother did so, he saw a smear of blood over his knuckles and his armored gauntlet.

"B-Blood!? This runt made me, Raditz, an elite Saiyan warrior bleed!?" the Saiyan's eyes whited out in a manner similar to that in which Goku's own eyes were. Although for far different reasons.

"Elite?" Chayote yelled out from the sidelines, causing Raditz to look away at her. "Don't be joking around like that. Maybe that lie would have worked on someone like the Earthlings who have never been on Planet Vegeta but I've seen a few of the elite and you're not one of them. You're just a low-class warrior, just like your brother and just like me."

"What was that!?" Raditz scowled with an almost cartoonish expression of absolute fury as bursts of violet energy sparked in his hands. Then, without any warning to it, the blasts disappeared and the Saiyan calmed down. He approached his downed brother and flipped him over his shoulder.

"Fine. I suppose you're right. We're both just a pair of weaklings, nothing compared to the likes of Lord Frieza or Vegeta… My brother did extremely well against me. My vengeance is all tuckered out, swinging fists tends to do that." Raditz mumbled to himself while drowning in sweat.

"Hey, Fortuneteller Baba, how does one use those Dragon Balls?" Chayote turned to the old, floating woman. A smirk beamed on Raditz's face.

"Well, you just pour them over the floor and say the words: Divine Dragon, come forth and grant me this wish!" Baba explained. Chayote stepped up to Goku's backpack, unzipped it and let the seven Dragon Balls roll out on the ground.

"Divine Dragon, come forth and grant me this wish!" Chayote tried mirroring Baba's hand gestures and facial mimics, she was simply not sure how the ritual was performed exactly, which meant that she could not take any chances. Else she risked having the Dragon Balls scatter across the world again without making her wish come true, at least that was how she thought those little orbs to work.

One patch at a time, the sky gave in to dusk and gloom while bolts of lightning ran rampant across the surrounding area. Chayote glared at Raditz, who still held Goku over his shoulder with a kind face and decided to sit down by the edge of the ring to catch a breath.

"You might not be that bad of a guy. I'll make you a deal. I bring you back to life and you let Kakarot win the match, surrender or ring yourself out, it doesn't matter." Chayote explained her plan.

"Oh… I see… Okay, I promise, cross my heart, bring me back to life and I will give up to Kakarot." Raditz declared with a hand over his chest.

A bolt of lightning struck the Dragon Balls, enveloping them in a golden, draconic aura and raising them to the sky a fair few meters. The balls trembled with divine power before unleashing it all in the shape of an ethereal beam that coiled and made its way through the heavens. The golden beam then took the shape of a serpentine dragon and solidified into the complete image of a Divine Dragon with scaly, green skin, gleaming red eyes, and brown antlers. Salad colored mane rustled by the sides of the dragon's face like godly mutton chops.

"Now, state your wish!" the dragon boomed with a mighty and threatening voice that sounded like thunder that had perceivable meaning.

"Chayote, don't trust that man! He's mean, he beat Goku up like that, he can't possibly be a good guy!" Upa pleaded, pulling on Chayote's skirt lightly.

"The boy does have a point, are you sure you can trust this snake? At the very least have him surrender before returning him to life…" Baba smiled while a drool hung from her lower lip through a gap in between missing teeth.

"What will your wish be, lowly mortals! Those who have disturbed me, state your wish now!" the Divine Dragon roared out, making the ground tremble underneath Chayote's feet and sending more specks of dirt from the collapsing fighting stage.

"Restore Kakarot's strength and heal him." Chayote demanded.

"Wh-What!?" Raditz lost his shit. "N-No! Divine Dragon, bring me back to life!"

"Very well. A simple matter…" The Divine Dragon winked his eyes. One by one, the majestic ritual that gave him birth rolled the entire procession backward, becoming a beam of energy, weakening and thinning out into nothingness before a lowly jolt hit the Dragon Balls and rose them up to the sky. With the dissolution of the final jolt of energy, the balls scattered across the world.

"D-Did it work?" Raditz wondered to himself before a kick to his cheek sent him flying across the stage, headed right for a ring-out. With the Saiyan warrior just inches above the ground, Raditz froze in mid-air with the power of flight and returned back to the fighting arena. "Damn you!" he grunted at Son Goku who stood back on his feet, his Turtle Gi tattered but his body tougher than it has ever been.

"Did you really think I'd trust a pit viper like you?" Chayote snickered with a mocking expression at Raditz. "You're such a poor liar, I was all over your intentions the moment you started acting as if you cared about Kakarot. Acting that so conveniently started the moment you heard us talking about the Dragon Balls bringing people back from the sidelines."

"As if you're in any position to judge me. Lying like that!" Raditz hissed at the deceitful Saiyan.

"You must admit, us low-class warriors are liars by nature. We must be to hang around our elite brethren." Chayote shrugged. "Plus, I needed a guarantee that you would behave with the Divine Dragon summoned. If you had every reason to believe you were going to be resurrected, you wouldn't try anything stupid like attacking the Divine Dragon or trying to speak your wish before me."

"I suppose your friends were lucky you're such a cunning fox…" Baba smiled with a two-teeth smile.

"Chayote might have lied but she did so to help Son Goku. That's still good enough, don't get discouraged!" Upa nodded his head in acknowledgment of the bittersweet expression on Chayote's face.

"Man, this good and bad business is really confusing…" Chayote scratched her head. "Now you're saying that doing bad things is good if the circumstances are right? I guess Devil Man won't be the only one teaching me for these coming three years."

"Damn you! I'll kill all of you for this betrayal!" Raditz roared out, bursting with the remains of his strength but he was met with the adamant, stone-wall of Son Goku, staring back at his brother with an unimpressed expression and a wide-open fighting stance, as if daring his brother to come at him with all of his strength. "And I'll be damn sure to wipe that expression off your face, Kakarot!"

With renewed strength, bolstered by the full recovery ability, Goku was about to take a shot at his older brother.

* * *

**Author's Note: I suppose there might be some people who will hate me for the tease of Raditz joining the supporting cast :D**

**That's fine, it's just that I never saw Raditz as someone capable of or worthy of redemption. Unlike Vegeta and a few other "villains" that have redeemed themselves, Raditz just seemed too destined and set in stone to be changed. He was a trickster and a liar through and through whereas Vegeta, even as a bad guy, had a moral code. Even if redemption is a core theme of the series, every bad guy that has been redeemed in Dragon Ball showed signs of being capable of redemption at some point. They showed signs that they were not completely evil whereas Raditz was just such a hatable heel and so good at getting the necessary heat that it would have been a disservice to his art of the heel to "redeem" him. **

**There are plenty of Raditz turned good stories out there, most of them written by people way better at this stuff than me. For Pete's sake, even Masako X took a fair shot from his cocaine boat in Miami beside his skyscraper-sized money vault. I just don't feel like I have anything to add to the twist that other people haven't done better than I could ever do and, to be honest, I don't even really want to do it, to begin with... **

**Sorry if it left someone disappointed or sad, Raditz is just going to remain as a hatable bastard in my story because I just like him that way too much :)**


	38. Departure Before the Storm

Goku's face may have been calm but his eyes burnt with passion. A certain type of ardor for what he was naturally most talented for. Enthusiasm for his newly gained strength. It did not take a master martial artist to see that the boy would have long since attacked his enemy, so eager to clash his strength against that of his brother, had it not been for the difference in fighting style and stance he picked up on Korin's Tower.

Raditz pressed his arms to his sides and lunged forward. The dynamic of battle had changed in its entirety. No longer the underdog Goku now comfortably allowed his enemy to dictate the battle terms, knowing that he would be the one to come out on top, regardless of said terms.

The resurrected Saiyan flipped over in mid-air, throwing both of his feet forward as he tried to stomp a stationary opponent. Instead of the hardened flesh of his brother's body, the feet only hit and shattered a layer of rock underneath while Goku blitzed behind Raditz by diving under his brother's vaulting body. A kick in the back made Raditz's body bend in an awkward manner and fly off towards the central building of Baba's temple.

The building outright exploded with erupting pressure from the impact. The force of collision made Raditz black out for a short while before emerging from the debris battered and bruised. The eyes of the young man were shaking with respectful fear and his mouth was gaping with shock.

"Well, well… It would appear that Son Goku is the winner." Baba declared.

"A single blow…" Upa's face widened out at the matching pace to the crawl at which he comprehended the outcome before him. While said outcome might have occurred right in front of him, he had perceived none of it except for the deafening blast of the demolished building.

A single blow, that was how long it took for Goku to dispose of an opponent about as strong as the Saibaman that had killed Chayote back home. While this monkey boy was a pointless measure to judge the military potential of Earth by as he was not from this planet, he was a fine standard to compare one's own strength against that of other Saiyans. If Chayote's peers were going through vicious battles like that which Goku has survived now every day, she's lightyears away to being of any use to Lord Frieza.

Perhaps this Earthling mysticism was the answer?

"Heh, heh… I won!" Goku turned to his friends with a budding gesture of a peace sign on his right hand. "Now you'll let me meet my grandpa, right?"

"I will…" Baba sighed. "He was most eager to meet you but when he heard that your brother was also an option, he did not rush to return to life at all. Regardless, you can meet him but it will happen on the Otherworld. It is far easier for mortals to pass on to the other side than the other way around…"

"Kakarot…" Raditz emerged from the destroyed building fully and began creeping up to the arena. "Don't think this fluke decides anything! We're far from being through!"

"Okay. Get stronger first, then challenge me again. I'll take you on any time." Goku smirked with a raised fist, turned sideways toward his older brother. Seeing Goku harbor no ill will whatsoever toward the older brother who came here solely to punish and murder him felt just like the right kind of crazy for the boy to invite a smile on Chayote's face.

"Say, this Raditz guy is evil, right?" Chayote wondered.

"Well… I suppose so. He is mean and he is a typical Saiyan…" Upa shrugged. "Though…"

Chayote looked down at the boy who rubbed the back of his elbow and looked up at the young woman with an unsure expression as if he was about to erupt into tears at any moment.

"I'm beginning to wonder about the whole good and bad thing right now. I mean… You were pretty mean when you landed on Earth but you changed. Raditz is pretty bad but he's bad because he blames Goku for his trouble. He might be totally wrong about that but if he moved past that belief… I wonder if even he could change." Upa sighed.

Baba looked down at the young boy who would serve as her pupil and assistant for the upcoming three years and smiled, she looked proud of the boy she had accepted as her disciple.

"I… Changed?" Chayote repeated a pair of words that Upa said.

"Sure. When you landed, you were mean and killed people and animals left and right. Your only redeeming quality was that the God of Korin Tower picked you himself," Upa explained.

"Kakarot!" Raditz yelled out, winding back his arm while a net of electricity accumulated and grew thicker and thicker, becoming a sphere-shaped web that flung jolts of lightning outward. "I won't give up until I present you your death!"

The sphere of Ki manifested as lightning erupted into a lightning storm, unleashing a wild cascade of its bolts everywhere at once. Baba covered herself and began scampering all over her crystal ball in a desperate attempt to avoid doom by electrocution. Upa zipped right behind Chayote's lap, knowing full-well that the Saiyan would protect him, willingly or by just standing in the way of Raditz's attack.

Goku stood in the center of the stage, smoke rose up from the Saiyan boy as it did from the cooked stage around him but, besides a few light burns and more damage to his tattered Ki, there did not appear to be any effect to Raditz's attack. The fact that Goku just stood there and took the brunt of the attack that appeared to have driven Raditz himself to the brink of collapse accentuated the difference between the strength of the two more than him dodging or continuing to beat on his older brother ever would have.

"Heh… Heh heh heh!" Raditz snickered through the heavy pants of running low on juice to keep standing, "You think you're all that, don't you? Don't get cocky just because you did me in… Once our father comes looking for you – use whatever lousy Earthling tricks you wish – you'll have your ass handed to you!"

"That's such a Saiyan thing to do." Chayote smiled, speaking loud enough to distract Raditz's attention. "Brag about being able to beat anyone and anything and when that bravado runs out, threaten the enemy with someone else they wouldn't be able to beat."

"Heh, I don't even know who you are… You look like a Saiyan but… I've never seen you or heard of you, means you're worthless, low-class trash too. Father might take Kakarot's lowly hide in out of family sentimentality but you? You should make sure you settle your plans before meeting him…" Raditz chuckled. It would have sounded frightening if he was not this short of breath and spoke from a position of utter defeat.

Chayote did shit her stance in unease. Their father? That might have been the Saiyan that Goku saw in his vision on Korin's Tower. Chayote's own visions for the future might not have stretched too far on ahead, all she could envision from those images were her facing off against some baldy in the World Martial Arts Tournament and meeting Kami on some airship alongside Goku. Before those two things happen, Goku's father is unlikely to appear.

And what when he does appear? Chayote's been living on Earth for years now and she knows now more than ever before that this planet will not prepare her for the coming of Saiyans. Her best option was still to depart and train up in space, on her way to join Lord Frieza's army again. Although… Seeing Raditz, a Saiyan warrior who, unlike Chayote, was a valued member of Lord Frieza's army and fought alongside other Saiyans conquering planets before his untimely demise, be such a major dickbag sort of made Chayote reconsider if acting upon her true nature was still what she wanted.

Muten Roshi, that old pervert, he was long all along. It was only now when her doubts have become bolstered as Goku's strength has been too that she realized just how split and confused about her role in this Universe the teen Saiyan was.

"If he's anything like you, he's no dad of mine." Goku declared, taking Raditz's full attention back and shocking the collapsed warrior. "He may be my real dad, just like you and Chayote kept telling me but I'm no Saiyan. I grew up on Earth and if this man you call our dad is mean to my Earthling friends and threatens this planet – I'll knock him flat too!"

Chayote smiled. Seeing Goku act so childish in front of an actual, looming threat seemed so inspiring, even if it was impossible to say if he was more excited about beating his own father up to protect his friends from his wrath or because of the thrill that such a fight would undoubtedly offer.

Raditz erupted into a mad fit of laughter, utilizing his own second wind for insanity instead of something useful. "I'll look forward to meeting you down in Hell then, Kakarot. Trust me, after this meeting, those ogre-bastards will find no worse Hell for you than to put you together with me!"

"That's about enough from you," Baba pointed her finger at Raditz, letting off a rippling cascade of Ki from the tip of her finger. Raditz turned more and more transparent before disappearing completely and the next gust of wind carrying the clouds of dust and gravel about found nothing to pelt all of it at. "You've wasted enough of your energy for me to justify an early return. Now, I believe I had a promise to fulfill, you two, better make sure to settle down here. Neither I nor Devil Man will accept slacking off!"

"Sure thing," Chayote saluted the old crone similarly to how the Red Ribbons used to salute their superiors.

"Yes, ma'am!" Upa bowed.

"Say, Fortuneseller Baba…" Goku leaned back against his arms.

"Fortune TELLER!" Baba yelled out after whizzing to the boy with her crystal ball and leaning over him to empty her elderly lungs at him.

"Do you think I could maybe stay in the Otherworld? Just like Raditz stayed here for a day, maybe I could stay and train with my grandpa?" Goku wondered. "You said it's not that big of a deal when mortars do it, right?"

"It's mortals and…" Baba took off her witch hat and scratched her head. "Don't know, it might work. Psychics and all sorts of posers spend a decent bit of time in there. If your grandfather agrees, if we can settle on a neutral space for you two to train, given that he's not in Hell and retained his soul… It's possible."

"Awesome!" Goku jumped up, eager to fist the sky.

"Now then, seeing how you've completed my trial and made your decision to stay until the end of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament, let's see what can be done about your reward," Baba said and began hovering back toward the northern building of her temple, the same one that led to the Devil's Toilet but that was but one of the building's many pathways.

The trio followed the fortuneteller. Upa turned a fearful gaze at every oddity he encountered even if the exact nature of most of them evaded his knowledge. Whether it was because of shadows that enveloped each artifact and holy or unholy item located in Baba's possession or because of a lack of mystical background that was required to know of them, the boy feared them nevertheless.

Goku was the only one to walk in perfect relaxation and moderate excitement. The exact nature of his mood was tough to tell in the dark without his tail attached to his bottom but he looked both unaffected by the surrounding mysticism around him and happy for the prize he had managed to win. It looked almost as if he had forgotten his close brush with death and a meeting with his older brother which happened just moments ago…

Chayote's face rested uneasily as well, however, her eyes stayed focused on Baba's back as the trio went for a short trip to a rather quaint and faintly lit room with jars and somebody's eyeballs and dissected rodents decorating the many stands inside the room with piles of books resting atop the single reading table. It was a notable feature of the room, seeing how Baba only had place in it for a messy bed and a reading table. Not even a cauldron found its place in this strange room filled with the strangest things to ever be called an ingredient.

Baba slipped off of her floating crystal ball and furrowed underneath her bed, pulling out an old box and then pulled out stacks of Zeni bills from it, shuffling through various until she found the right one. The fortuneteller then pinched at the Free Return Ticket and handed it to Chayote. It appeared to be in the same tattered condition just like the one that Baba showed before which made the teen Saiyan raise a few questions.

"Didn't you already have the Free Return Ticket with you?" she wondered.

"Of course not, I won't carry around the real one with me with how much of a pain it was to acquire. Those troublesome deities don't hand out their dull-edged trinkets easily, you know." Baba shook her fist over her own head and then shoved her hand with the ticket closer to Chayote. With a hesitating hand, the Saiyan took her prize and placed inside her breast pocket.

"Be careful," Baba warned the young Saiyan with a wary face. "With how much you brawl, I can keep the ticket safe for you, for a decent price, of course…"

"I'll manage, there's not that many people or demons left on this planet that can catch me unprepared when I don't want them to." Chayote shrugged.

"Suit yourself. Now wait here and settle in while I deliver this troublemaker to the Otherworld. Promises are so troublesome, I swear…" Baba sighed.

Baba crawled onto her floating crystal ball and drifted off with Goku following her from behind. Chayote and Upa glared at one another.

"What now?" Upa whimpered.

"You heard the old crone, find yourself a room and settle down. You'll be spending some time here. Unless you're chickening out already?" Chayote raised an eyebrow.

"No!" Upa pressed his tiny fists to his sides, he was still petrified but it seemed like he was picking up the Earthling ways of turning fear into as powerful of a motivator for action as excitement was for Saiyans. "I'm going to learn more about mysticism. If I learn to contact the dead spirits, as Fortuneteller Baba does, maybe I can contact the past generations of the guardians of Korin Tower and have them help me when I have to succeed father."

"Suit yourself. I won't blame you if you want to run off, you said it yourself – I don't need you anymore. This whole good and evil nonsense is bullshit." Chayote sighed while heading toward the door. She wondered if the Devil Man and Dracula Man had recovered and could have been troubled for some training.

"It isn't! Good and evil still exist but they lay in our behavior, not in who we are." Upa grabbed Chayote's thigh and pulled on it. Just something to keep her in the room long enough to hear him.

"I guess I was wrong. Maybe I still do need you…" Chayote looked back at the boy with a smile.

* * *

"Ready, Krillin?" Yamcha looked at his partner who was dragging a boat behind him. In a moment of hesitation, the pint-sized martial artist abandoned his makeshift floating apparatus and scanned the endless oceans ahead of him.

"Yeah!" Krillin nodded.

"No, leave the float behind, you too, Yamcha, no capsules." A mental message reached both martial artists ready to embark on a training journey. The pair turned around to face Launch in her blue-haired form with a tiny micro-Roshi sticking out from her cleavage where he hung out lately. "The point of this training is for you two to train. If you fly and swim everywhere using machines and gadgets, what's the point?"

"I see…" Yamcha smiled. He pulled out a small capsule case from inside his gi and handed it to Launch. Krillin dropped the rope of his float as well. Scanning the oceans ahead with a whole different set of eyes. Eyes hungry for adventure, for knowledge of what laid beyond and a feeling of satisfaction and readiness for whatever he would encounter.

"I still think it will be mean to not tell Bulma." Krillin chuckled, giving Yamcha a squint-eyed expression as if teasing his friend.

"I can't. She won't let me go if I do. It's mean of me to do this after we planned this vacation for so long and she made her way here for the summer but… If I am to walk the path of a martial artist, vacation is not a word that mixes with training." Yamcha shook his head. He was as conflicted with the decision to leave as he was settled on the decision to not tell Bulma. Also, utterly frightened by the prospect of the genius inventor ever finding out about his departure.

"Teehee! You'll need every bit of training to survive Bulma's beatdown after you two meet again." Krillin teased his friend and stepped knee-deep into the ocean.

"Will you be okay, Roshi-san?" Yamcha turned back to his mentor.

"My sister called and said that she's got Goku and Chayote. She said that it serves a perverted old geezer like me right to stay tiny as the Dragon Balls were used up. If you want to ever catch up to those two, you can only do it your own way, not staying fixated on this island and my regiment. Don't worry about me, I've got Launch-san and I'm sure that, eventually, Bulma will find a way to reverse the Micro Band's effects herself. If she's half of an inventor as she claims herself to be, she won't be able to live with herself with a problem staring her in the face." Roshi replied telepathically as his vocals would not have been picked up if he tried talking normally.

"Roshi-sama's sister…" Krillin sighed. "Those two keep finding crazy people to train with. We better keep up, Yamcha!"

Yamcha nodded without uttering a word and the two took a dive into the water as the morning sun began dawning on the horizon. Like a pair of disc saws, they split the open to pieces with intense ripples, the crystal clarity of the desire to grow stronger gleaming like gemstones in both of their eyes as they set out to leave their own marks on the world.

* * *

"We've made a lot of money, didn't we, Ten-san?" a levitating dwarf of ghoulish appearance which its red cheeks contrasted greatly turned to his companion. A far more intimidating fellow who would have appeared not too different from a casual Earthling had it not been for his third eye resting closed on his forehead.

"Sure." He agreed giving a massive, purple hog behind the pair a mean look. One that the beast itself was oblivious to as it munched on a cabbage that one of the pair had handed it earlier. Devouring a cabbage whole was no big deal at all to a titan of such size but the beast made sure to gobble it slow.

"What's wrong, Ten-san?" the child-like ghoul wondered.

"It feels like we're wasting time, Chiaotzu! Taopaipai-sama has disappeared, meaning there's a strong fighter out there capable of beating him. Meanwhile, we're wasting time conning a bunch of farmers out of their produce and money like common thugs." Tenshinhan clenched his fists in anger.

"B-But… There's not much more that the Tsuru Sennin can teach us." Chiaotzu's face shifted in discomfort. It seemed as if the little ghoul got frightened every time his partner became frustrated. Something profoundly odd as Ten had never lashed out against Chiaotzu or hurt him outside their sparring sessions.

"Your little friend is right, you know…" a voice from the outside of the social circle made Ten and Chiaotzu turn their attentions towards a mysterious figure floating above the ground. "Tsuru Sennin will only hold you two back, he will also ruin everything."

The gigantic hog rushed ahead, shoving Ten off his way and making Chiaotzu take off in flips and yell as he attempted to stabilize his levitation. The mysterious figure extended her hand forward and the beast's eyes turned sleepy. In a few moments, the bestial titan InoShikaCho collapsed on the ground and began splitting the earth underneath with its thunderous snoring.

"The Hypnosis technique? That's something from the Turtle School!" Tenshinhan clenched his fist and took a fighting stance.

"Calm down now, I'm not here to fight either of you. Just nudge you two in a more favorable direction." The old lady floated up closer, letting Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu make out a bit more of her features.

"Wh-Who are you, you don't look like much of a fighter!" Chiaotzu declared with a frightened tone. The fact that he could not pick up a hint of strength from the old woman yet she carried herself with such confidence was the source of his intimidation this time.

"She's Fortuneteller Baba, the older sister of Muten Roshi!" Tenshinhan growled. He still honored the idea of attacking and killing the woman on the spot, even though she did not look capable of protecting herself now. "Why would we ever do anything more favorable for you!"

"Oh, no no no! You misunderstand, young man. I am not here to have you act in a way more favorable for me. Well… Not directly. You see, recently I've picked up a most curious pair of students. Their current power completely dwarfs that of yours and I've made them false promises that you can keep up with them and surprise them. Obviously you cannot. Which is why I am here to have you stop this nonsense you're doing and start training for real, otherwise, Chayote and Son Goku will be most disappointed in your performance three years from now." Baba smiled.

"You're lying! There's no way there's somebody in the Turtle School as strong as us! Taopaipai-sama was the strongest man on Earth matched only by the Tsuru Sennin!" Tenshinhan replied with aggression yet something inside him prevented him from lashing out at the old woman. He knew that Tsuru Sennin would have wanted him to kill her but… That was not the way of martial arts, not even that of the Crane School martial arts.

Even Taopaipai only killed helpless people if he was paid right or it benefited him in some way. Knowing that he was not going to taint his martial artist's honor by slaying an old crone he met on the road forced Tenshinhan to break his fighting stance.

"Oh? And where is Taopaipai? You haven't seen him in a while, right? Maybe that's because he's in Hell now after one of the pair I am training sent him there?" Baba's smile took a very twisted turn to it, knowing full-well of the infuriating effect that her declaration would have.

"You're bluffing!" Tenshinhan yelled out.

"Maybe. If you want I can arrange a meeting between you two and help you find out? Still, you'd be wasting even more time. As much as I'd like to waste my time here trying to turn you over from a wanna-be assassin to an honorable martial artist as is your inevitable path, right now, I think I'll have much more use from you if you want to kill my students as much as possible." Baba explained. "So train. Train until your entire body is battered and broken and, during a moment of your respite, think of your deceased mentor and let the rage sustain your berserk rebirth to train more. Even then, you are unlikely to stand any chance at all but… It'll at least be something."

Baba turned around and, before Ten could ask or say anything else, a ghost usher appeared from underneath her cloak, expanding its white, protoplasmic body to cover his mistress up into a ghastly will-o-wisp that blitzed off at neck-breaking speed into the night.

"Ten-san…" Chiaotzu's voice whimpered.

"Let's go, Chiaotzu, we have a lot of training to do!" Tenshinhan growled out.


	39. The Big Papaya Reunion

"We are beginning our final descent to Durian Airport on Papaya Island, the site of this year's 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament. Please, fasten your seatbelts."

"That would be very difficult if Bulma didn't undo the effects of the Micro Band and make you normal-sized, huh?" Oolong raised his voice and leaned in over Bulma's chest so that Muten Roshi, who sat on the right row parallel to where Oolong and Bulma sat on the plane to Papaya Island, could hear him.

"Silence, you miscreant!" Muten Roshi threw slobber from his mouth over his vocal objection. He now tended to enjoy speaking from the bottom of his chest since everybody around him could hear him again. The man had spent an uncomfortable to him amount of time as a microscopic-sized dwarf and, frankly, had it not been for his unnatural strength and martial arts abilities, he'd not have lasted any longer that way.

"Stewardess-chan, could you please show me to the nearest toilet?" Muten Roshi leaned up to the passing flight attendant.

"I-I'm very sorry, sir. We'll be landing momentarily if you could just wait a little bit longer…" The woman appeared worked up over the fact that the elder held all this way to here and now just had to go when the plane was about to land.

"I'll see what I can do, but land quick!" Roshi yelled out and pressed his hands to his sides as if he was building up his Ki for a massive attack but, more honestly, he was keeping one at bay.

"Well… He might be back to normal-size, but he's still a filthy old shrimp…" Bulma sighed in disappointment over the old man's behavior, doing her best to cover herself up and try to distance herself from the grunting old man beside her.

* * *

"The registration's almost over…" Oolong pressed his knuckles to his hips. "Where the hell is everyone?"

"The other fighters are all registering so we didn't get the date wrong. What's keeping Yamcha-san so long?" Puar hummed out in worry.

"Maybe they all forgot the date? Time flies when you're out in the wild…" Muten Roshi wondered with a solemn face. He had returned from his bathroom break just a few moments ago and he already was back to his old, embarrassment-inducing ways.

"Not that you would know…" Umegame found an opportunity to bite his cohabitant.

"I can't believe Yamcha just left you behind, Puar… You two seemed pretty tight. Partners in crime, one might say…" Oolong squinted, giving Puar a cheeky stare while reminding him of their common shady past.

"Oh, that Yamcha's gonna get it!" Bulma clenched her fists and grit her teeth in pure rage. "No matter what training he did and where, nothing's gonna save him from what I'll do to him after I got him a position to train with Muten Roshi with the hope of hanging out with him more and having him just ditch me on the island like that!"

"Hmmm… I wonder… Maybe they've become so fast that they are in no rush to get here?" Muten Roshi looked up into the sky. "I can't wait to see how far they've walked on their own and how they'll impress us by getting here on time…"

A short yet plump hunk of yellow steel on wheels with a taxi sign on top and a pair of checkered logos all over its sides hauled in a sudden stop. The door burst open, letting a pair out. A tall man with long, dark hair hanging in a ponytail with a face covered with a handful of scars and a bald young teen. Both wore complete rags and completed their looks with straw hats.

"Jeez, man… I can't believe you got lost in the town you work in!" Krillin complained to the cab driver.

"Sorry, sorry… Tell ya what, I'll take half off of your pay?" the cab driver laughed with an apologetic expression.

"Really!? That's great! Yamcha, go get someone to pay the man!" Krillin turned to his friend with a gleaming smile.

"Wh-What do you mean, don't you have any money?" the cab driver flipped out. "Why did you even take the taxi then!?"

"Sorry, man… I figured that someone of my friends would pay. It was pretty lucky of me to bump into Yamcha too, this way we both can get covered…" Krillin stroke the back of his head with a blush that he tried to hide by lowering the front of his conical straw hat over his face.

"Like hell I'll pay!" Bulma roared from across the street after Yamcha approached her.

"That's just fine…" blond Launch cocked her gun. "I'll handle it…"

As the blonde with an oversized handgun approached the taxi to see if the cab driver takes payment by 50AE, the taxi jumpstarted and darted off and out of sight. The driver had better instincts than to let the rabble-rouser approach his vehicle. While he did appear embarrassed by the way he got out of the social and economic predicament, Krillin nodded and thanked Launch nevertheless.

"It's refreshing to see Launch-san aim her gun at somebody else for a change…" he joked.

"B-But Bulma! I had to leave, my pride as a martial artist was on the line. If I didn't leave, Krillin, Goku, and Chayote would have left me completely in the dust and I couldn't tell you because you'd have never let me leave…" Yamcha tried pleading for his case but Bulma didn't look like she was about to have any of it. With a shriveled and twisted expression of hellish scorn, the young woman just stared anywhere but at the direction Yamcha stood in.

Then, without saying anything but letting a sigh leave her chest, the inventor just left all by herself, heading toward the inner area of the tournament temple filled with casual activities one could have enjoyed while they waited for the preliminaries to conclude.

"Man… You lucked out. These past three years she just couldn't shut up about how she'd kick your ass when she saw you," Oolong snickered.

"I… I think I'd rather take her being angry with me. That I know, that I can handle…" Yamcha looked on ahead at the direction where he last saw Bulma leave in while he sighed and stared at his uneasy feet.

"This place… Sure takes 'ya back, doesn't it?" Krillin smirked, trying to lift Yamcha's spirits back up.

"Stop dilly-dallying you two!" Muten Roshi scolded his pupils, "You haven't registered yet!"

"Oh… Right…" Krillin rushed on to the registry table, Yamcha approached not too far behind, providing his name to the registry of participants as well.

"By the way… Can you check the registry for a "Son Goku" or "Chayote"?" Yamcha wondered.

"Nope," the monk shook his head.

"You can't? Why not?" Krillin raised a suspicious eyebrow.

"He meant they've not registered yet, Krillin," Yamcha explained.

"Those two… The registrations are about to close…" Krillin groaned.

"So… Did you find it? The Korin Tower?" Muten Roshi wondered.

"Not at first. For the first year we trained separately, it seemed like we both had the same idea…" Yamcha nodded with a smile. "It took us a handful of weeks each to catch Korin-sama, then the real training started…"

"Hmmm… Half a mil, huh?" Launch looked around like she was scoping the joint for the big job. "Maybe I should enter too this year?"

"You know they don't allow guns, Launch." Oolong pointed out.

"Only a few minutes left…" Yamcha looked at a large clock in the center of the inner square, somewhat visible from out in the yard.

"Hmmm… Don't worry, they'll get here. If what Chayote told us about Saiyans is true, those two would never miss a chance for a good brawl…" Muten Roshi cleared his throat from a fit of coughing he got.

After a distinctive pop, a gumball-sized white orb appeared that then became softer and goopier, as if some supernatural, invisible force was chewing it. The gumball then expanded into a massive blob, unveiling an old lady on a crystal ball with a traditional witch's attire, a native boy carrying a pair of tomahawks on his back and a young woman in a tight, blue jumpsuit that was intended to cover her entire body but had chunks ripped out of it to comprise an entire outfit.

"There, got you here just in time, kid." Baba turned to Chayote with her signature, viper-like, penetrating glare.

"You'd better have…" Chayote replied with a flair of cool that was unusual for her. While her all-around attitude had remained its old, trademarked, rude same, her tone had changed from the very fundamentals. At a slow and almost lazy pace, the Saiyan approached the registration stand.

"Hey, Upa, my name's Krillin and this is Yamcha." Krillin pointed at Yamcha with his thumb, addressing the native boy almost the same size as him.

"Do we know each other?" Upa wondered. His voice had grown a tad huskier as well in the last three years, both as a natural effect of the boy's budding maturity as well as his growing confidence as Fortuneteller Baba's assistant in her mystical dealings.

"We've met your father, Bora. He wouldn't let us scale the Korin Tower until we bested him." Yamcha laughed out. "That test made me feel glad I've trained hard on my own for a year before challenging him…"

"Hey, old man, you're back at full-size…" Chayote stated after returning from the registration stand to the crowd of her acquaintances.

"Uh-huh, Bulma finally decided to start working on the solution last year… She says that she felt like it was her responsibility since it was her Micro-Band that caused this but she enjoyed punishing me that way, I bet, that blue she-devil!" Muten Roshi clenched his fists before placing them to his cheeks and shaking his blushed head. "Oh, who am I kidding, I can't be mad at a gal as Pichi-Pichi as that… Speaking of Pichi-Pichi…"

Chayote did not need to move. While the old man's seemingly supernatural age of consent radar tipped him off in the right direction, her very aura froze Roshi on his feet.

"Bulma might have some formidable ferocity, but she's not the blue she-devil in this part of the galaxy…" the teen Saiyan stated calmly, accentuating her uncanny growth in strength and skill that needed no further hyping up.

"Hmmm… Bora said you left the Sacred Land of Korin with Goku… I'm surprised you two haven't arrived here together…" Krillin complained at the Saiyan. Chayote gave Baba a mean look while the old crone paled out.

"Oh shit!" she cursed grabbing the Ghost Usher by its protoplasmic body and beginning to mangle and blobberize him again so that he took her to the Otherworld at once.

"I can't believe she forgot…" Chayote shook her head in disappointment that felt all too familiar inside. One that she had felt repeatedly over the three years of training despite feeling a moderate amount of respect for her mentor.

"Well, well… If it isn't the monster of martial arts Baba warned us about! I am Tenshinhan and I will be the one to slay you for the dishonor you've caused for the Crane School by killing Taopaipai-san as well as to push myself as a martial artist!" a resonating and strong masculine voice reached Chayote's ears prompting her to look behind her. She had felt a burning presence this entire time but in a crowd of mighty martial artists, there was nothing unusual in that alone. Besides, the man's own power was nowhere near unleashed.

"Oh, I imagine you're the remarkable martial artist that was supposed to challenge me in the tournament? It seems like Baba-san kept both of us intrigued, that old puppeteer… My name's Chayote, I'm a Saiyan from Planet Vegeta." Chayote smiled at the man who looked far too poisoned on a more guttural level to share the sentiment with the Saiyan in front of him.

"What was that?" Tenshinhan grunted, raising his fist out in front of him. Chayote could sense the inner struggle that was meant to keep the reserved power away from erupting from within Tenshinhan. "Are you saying we've been played?"

"No, I did kill Taopaipai. It's just quite funny because I would have long left this planet had it not been for you. Baba kept me here with the promise of you entertaining me." Chayote couldn't help but smirk. She realized that this was not something Earthlings would have found proper – wearing a smile when admitting one had killed someone's martial arts master but the irony of it all did not let the pressure up. "What's odd is that you're placing much more emphasis on the worth of martial arts and pride than your master, had you not told me Taopaipai was your master, I'd have never guessed…"

"You…!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth, a vein popped out on his forehead while he ground his teeth together. The tiny ghoul beside him grabbed the miffed martial artist by his thigh and pulled on it, directing Tenshinhan to the registration and then into the inner halls of the tournament building.

"What was that all about?" Krillin looked at Chayote with a frightened look on his face. His strength was formidable, it dwarfed that of the Krillin Chayote had last seen. And yet Tenshinhan with most of his power completely suppressed under barriers only achievable through rigorous meditation had managed to frighten him.

"That uniform…" Muten Roshi stroke his beard. "I could have sworn it belonged to… But they did not wear his kanji…"

"Do you know them, Roshi?" Chayote turned to the old-timer.

"Not them specifically, no, the uniform they wore, it looked identical to the Crane School uniform. They spoke of it too… In that case, where could the Tsuru Sennin be? Could he have perhaps abandoned his martial arts training, grown old and died, I wonder?" Muten Roshi continued to mumble to himself. "No, I don't think that's it. Hearts as dark as the Tsuru Sennin's do not abandon their shadows by themselves."

"So then Tenshinhan and his ghoulish friend left their mentor behind? How strong was this Tsuru Sennin?" Chayote wondered.

"We were rivals during our youth. He bickered constantly with Taopaipai, I've heard, so he must have been at least strong enough to not get killed by his brother." Muten Roshi replied.

"In that case, it makes perfect sense." Chayote shrugged, "The pair abandoned their old master because he was holding them back. There was nothing a weakling like that could have taught them anyway, right? Their power at the moment, even if I have only sensed a snippet is nothing like any other Earthling I've faced."

"Hoh, so my sister has taught you to sense Ki then?" Muten Roshi looked up at Chayote who stared blankly at the main hall of the tournament.

"Devil Man and Baba did. Devil Man claimed that letting the enemy beat on me to determine their strength was a stupid fighting style so it was one of the first things he taught me." Chayote answered.

"D-Devil Man!? You've trained with Devil Man!?" Muten Roshi dropped his jaw before doing his best to regain his composure.

"Sure." Chayote closed her eyes and nodded.

"That guy… Do you think you can beat him? I've never seen Chayote this impressed by someone's raw strength." Yamcha asked with a hint of respectful fright in his own voice too.

"I don't know for certain. It depends on how much power he has sealed away. My power level is certainly dwarfing his but… If his martial arts prowess is as peerless as Baba claimed, well… I've long since stopped gauging the potential of Earthlings by their power level alone." Chayote shrugged. "One thing's for certain, no matter how powerful this man and his desire for vengeance is, he will not defeat Kakarot."

"Kakarot?" Krillin scratched his bald head.

"That's my other name, apparently!" Goku's voice boomed from the sides as the Saiyan youth emerged from the blobby sphere of protoplasm. "It's the name Chayote and Raditz, my brother, calls me. I don't think I like it though, please just call me Goku…"

"Other name? You mean your Saiyan name, your original name?" Muten Roshi wondered.

"Yeah. Anyways, how have you guys been? Wow! Yamcha and Krillin, you two have improved so much!" a smile that would have brightened the cloudy skies decorated Goku's face. No matter how somber Chayote's own attitude towards the future felt, even she had to smirk when seeing the scene of the old friends' reunion.

"You've grown so much, Goku!" Yamcha commended the teen who measured himself with his hand by extending it from his head above the air and tried to determine if that was much or not.

"Come on, Yamcha, I've grown too!" Krillin pouted his lips.

"Sorry, sorry… It's just that I didn't notice it with the two of us training together…" Yamcha laughed out.

"You two trained together? Where? At the old-timer's place?" Goku wondered. It took no time at all for Chayote to notice the boy's tail. Without a doubt, he had hardened it as it was his grandfather who advised Goku to harden it and the boy did spend three years training with him.

"No way, we trained with Korin-san himself!" Krillin bragged with a smug look on his face. "Aced his training, if I can say so myself…"

The grown baldy received a prompt smack over his head from his martial arts master and cried out in pain. "It's not the proper way of martial arts to brag about one's strength needlessly! It's something Tsuru Sennin might teach you, I won't stand for it myself. You may be Korin-san's pupils, but you are still mine as well."

"As arrogant as Krillin made it sound…" Yamcha pulled out a pair of dangling bells from his inner pocket. "Korin-san did give us these as a sign of worthiness. He said to not lose it and that we'd know what to do with these eventually…"

"Wow!" Goku hunched up and leaned forward and closer to the bells. "He gave me those too! Chayote said Korin didn't give her any bells though…"

"Announce it to the whole world, why won't you?" Chayote looked aside feeling embarrassment brimming in her cheeks with pulsing heat.

"So wait, you've trained with Korin-san too? But, in that case, where did you spend the last three years?" Krillin wondered, counting something on his fingers as if something in the story didn't add up.

"Huh? Oh, I trained with my grandpa in the Differentland…" Goku replied as if it was nothing unusual at all.

"Differentland?" Yamcha wondered.

"He means the Otherworld. It's where everyone who's dead goes after death." Chayote explained.

"Wha!? You trained in the Otherworld!?" Krillin freaked out, clearly, he had thought that his own training, as well as Yamcha's, was the hottest story of the three-year-break.

"With my grandpa, yes." Goku chuckled at everyone's surprise. "Say… Where's Bulma?"

"She already moved on ahead," Puar waggled his tail.

"What!? Bulma died!?" Goku lost his composure, jumping up at Puar and grabbing the poor thing by its shoulders. The youth had underestimated his grown size, speed, and strength as he easily wrestled the poor cat down on the ground. "Tell me what happened, when did she die!?"

"You idiot, he meant that Bulma went on ahead to the main hall. She and Yamcha clearly just had a falling out because he abandoned her to train." Chayote explained to her clueless fellow Saiyan. "Which is a stupid reason if you ask me, but that's what you get for not keeping a tighter hold on your woman, Yamcha."

"Should we even ask about what the Saiyan courtship is like?" Krillin joked. "I have a feeling we'd rather not…"

"I'd like to know!" Oolong raised his finger with an interjection but the party moving on ahead into the inner halls shut him out. It was just in time as well as the speakers announced the beginning of the tournament soon enough.

"All contestants, we will ask for some of your attention, please. The preliminaries of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament will now commence. Please make your way to the gymnasium, if you will ~ !"

* * *

_**Author's Note: Hey, occasional reader, I've been thinking about increasing my rate of writing, one chapter each week just doesn't really do it for me since the rate slowed down after my summer vacation ended and I've slowed it down until I can find a new rhythm for things. Sadly, I've been having some mild mood slumps lately so the writing rate increase might not be immediate... Really hope I can get things in order and put out more writing!**_


	40. Competitive Pride and Humility

"Alright, we're all split up!" Krillin exclaimed.

"How's that so exciting for you?" Chayote turned to him baffled. "You'll have to wait longer before you fight someone strong…"

"No, it's better to take on the strongest guys the very last, trust me!" Goku grabbed Chayote by the elbow and pulled on it. Both the young man's energy, as well as the fact that it was a Saiyan claiming so, helped Chayote to get onboard with the hype.

"If you say so…" she shrugged, considering to keep this Earthling ritual in mind. To her, it still seemed a little like Earth itself – Earthlings were cowardly so they postponed the really tough fighting until it was unavoidable. Still, if Goku was onboard... He was nothing if not genuine. He spent much more time on Earth and if he would have known fighting strong opponents later on to be different he'd not have held it back.

"The preliminary fights to determine the eight finalists of the World Martial Arts Tournament will now commence! Please confirm your assignment by comparing the number you drew against the chart and gather at the appropriate ring!"

Chayote raised her head up. She noticed Goku and the others heading toward the chart to check the numbers they've drawn. Yamcha looked back at Chayote who just mingled on one foot. He turned around and pressed his hands onto his hips.

"What's wrong? Aren't you coming?" he asked.

"Oh, I've already checked my number. My training with Baba was… Unnatural." She shrugged.

"I see…" Yamcha smiled, staring at Chayote for a couple of seconds with an inspired look before following Krillin and Goku to the chart.

"The rules are simple: you will fight one-on-one, if you fall out of the ring, are knocked out or give up – you lose. The use of all weapons is prohibited. There is no time limit from this point, therefore, please fight it out to your heart's content until a true winner is determined!"

Chayote closed her eyes and let the darkness envelop her. Father ahead, to the north by the charts, Goku raised his arm and spoke to Krillin. Yamcha turned back with an encouraging nod. They were wishing each other good luck. This ability of Baba's was too amazing to pass-up. If only Chayote could have devoted some more time to mastering it. Right now she was nowhere near seeing the future but she was great at seeing the present.

"Enjoying yourself? Should I feel glad you haven't picked up on fortune-telling quite yet? It's no good to just stare at the future, you'll end up wasting your life and turning into an old prune…" Baba's voice rang in Chayote's head. It appeared that the old crone was quite capable of mental communication, just like Muten Roshi.

"I figure that if I keep staring into the present enough, I'll eventually see the future, just like you." Chayote thought to herself. She wasn't able to speak mentally yet but those who were were used to reading one's thoughts as a potential reply to their telepathy.

"Normally I'd say you're full of it but… Who knows… A freak of nature like you might actually do it. When you first asked me to show you a thing or two, whatever you were trying to see, I was just humoring you. Just for the laughs… Even someone like me, a master that walks between the world of mortals and the Otherworld freely, needs a crystal ball but you… You just picked up on centuries of training in a snap." Baba spread gleeful signals in her mind, chuckling this way.

It must have been because of the vast difference in the strength between the two. Also because of the fact that Chayote was delving not only into the realm of psychics like Baba but also into martial arts as well. These two weren't quite the same but it was easier to learn how to bake cakes when one had practice with making perfect omelets than without such experience.

Chayote's eyes snapped open, frankly, she was furious that in three years of gradual practice in between building up her power level with Dracula Man and honing her martial arts skills with Devil Man she couldn't yet approach Baba's level in fortune-telling. Judging from what she saw, Goku, a low-class Saiyan, managed to catch up to Muten Roshi in about five years of training. The two were different in terms of martial arts prowess but comparable, at the very least.

Two years… Yes. Chayote was two more years of training short. She could then confirm what her future was, the future of Earth as well. If Kakarot's father and his goons would truly come eventually to claim him, as Raditz suggested and how monstrous his power truly was. If Chayote would ever return to reclaim her position at Lord Frieza's army? If that was truly her fate… So much uncertainty could have been quenched.

A thunderous thud derailed Chayote's train of thoughts. She looked around, her body had been operating on auto-pilot. She stood in the middle of the ring with her arms crossed over her chest and her opponent was crying uncle from the bottom of his lungs after breaking both his arms while trying to hit her, not unlike Suke-san during Baba's trial.

"P-Please step off the ring, Contestant 132!" the staff member yelled at Chayote in frustration. "Your fight is over."

So odd. Had Chayote let her autopilot do the work, she'd have been off the ring already. It was the source of thudding disturbance that demanded her attention. Chayote closed her eyes once more and hopped off the stage. The past. She had never even tried looking into the past… Why would she? What good would something as useless as the past do? Maybe help her with this gnawing sensation of curiosity, for once…

Yamcha… It was Yamcha. Yamcha's face, his image in sharp lines and then a blur. Yamcha had become strong. For an Earthling, at least. Even now he seemed unlikely to be in any state to challenge Chayote when she originally crashed on Earth from the Kami Tower but his moves were impressive. Even if he didn't tell her he trained with Korin, it was self-evident – the flawless economy of motion, the unmatched speed and certain toughness to his body that did not even demand him throw a single strike to win.

"Not lowering your guard, I hope." A familiar, headstrong voice rung from behind Chayote.

"You know better, that's why you're testing it with words, not actions." The Saiyan turned around to face Tenshinhan. Whereas usually, she would have been itching to go at him, tournament rules be damned, this thing Goku said about best fights being the most enjoyable when allowed to ripen as fine fruit piqued Chayote interest. It was that interest that allowed her to remain perfectly calm when confronted by someone described as a potential challenge to her.

"Broom-head." The little ghoul beside Tenshinhan squeaked. When Chayote offered him an ounce of her attention, the dwarf offered the Saiyan the grimace with his tongue in return.

"Be silent, Chiaotzu! This is not someone to underestimate, unlike those jokers in the first couple of blocks." Tenshinhand scolded his partner.

Chayote closed her eyes. The past of this man was utter blackness to her own third eye. One that laid inside her soul and allowed her to peek at more than ordinary men and women who did not allow themselves greater sight could. Whether Tenshinhan had psychic protections, feeling threatened by Baba after she approached him, or Chayote's psychic abilities simply weren't reliable enough, one fact remained – his past would remain a mystery to her until Tenshinhan himself decides to let her in on it.

"I'm surprised that you're not bragging to someone inferior to you. Shows excellent maturity as a martial artist to instead learn from observing your superiors." Chayote gave Tenshinhan a smug face and turned back to the ring, acting interested in a pair of nobodies dancing around one another like idiots, too absorbed in switching stances and howling instead to throw the first punch.

"What was that?!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth and tensed up his entire body. Chayote didn't even need to sense his rising Ki or escalating fighting intent. "Hmph…" just like that the martial artist calmed down.

"Ten…" Chiaotzu turned to Tenshinhan. This must not have been the kind of behavior this little zombie-brat was used to from his partner.

"You're different than I thought you'd be. I always imagined you as this bratty juggernaut. Just know that I can see right through you and I know that while you're all that which was described to me and then some on the outside, you're doubting and quivering at each turn on the inside." Tenshinhan put his knuckle in front of his extended palm and bowed in front of Chayote, a social gesture that showed that the young man considered her his equal and was interesting in the potential challenge of Chayote as a martial artist, however, he had other business to attend to.

"To the anxious audience, burning up to find out the results of the preliminaries we can only declare that the preliminary matches are moving along. The 182 contestants are whittling down nicely!"

"Krillin has greatly improved. He no longer seems afraid of fighting whatsoever, though it's likely because he's a tiger in a room filled with cockroaches. I wonder if Earthlings can ever move past their cowardly nature…" Chayote thought to herself while observing blurs of red settle down on a clear image of Krillin smacking his opponent out of the ring with a careless backhand smack. With their current level of strength, this lot now knew what it was like to be worried about not hurting one's opponent more than surviving the bout.

Although… Neither of the three was all that bothered by that. Chayote remembered having to work at it to keep her opponents alive last time but there three just breezed right past their opponents. When Chayote saw Goku toy with his opponent – a familiar face of King Chappa and trip his opponent out of the ring like a bully did to a random kid running past them from the canteen, she realized that the background in martial arts that these three had over the Chayote of the past meant the world in determining the level of skill in battle against all kinds of opponents, not only ones stronger than oneself but also weaker ones.

The hustle and bustle outside was incredible. One would think that to not be the case, given how the audience participating in the World Martial Arts Tournament as spectators pretty much had little to nothing to do early on, but, almost as if they were previously just standing about and absorbing the tension filling the air, it was just after the preliminaries that the crowd began flocking to the snacks and already to their spots near the ring where the finals would take place.

"Congrats, guys, you all passed!" Puar cheered.

"With how one-tracked your minds were… Who could have doubted?" Bulma fired off blazing twisters from her eyes but, despite her best attempts, Yamcha remained very much un-incinerated.

The poor dolt just stroked the back of his head as if looking for words to ease the tension between them but then just shrugged and let the natural progression of the congratulations to carry him off ahead.

"Huh… Where's Muten Roshi? Shouldn't he be the happiest out of everyone that we passed to the finals, who knows, maybe we'll get to humiliate those students of his rival's." Krillin shrugged. Chayote earlier assessment of the change in the boy's character was not only true but underestimated. The bald Earthling had become somewhat cocky due to his unnatural training and superhuman conditioning.

What cruel irony that the boy who felt petrified by weaklings beneath his level in the last tournament would now declare himself superior to people just as towering over him as he was over those he faced last time…

"Hmph… With how much time to perv on innocent girls he's missed out on, are you all that surprised he's not here?" Bulma grumbled.

"You're breaking an old man's heart!" Roshi's voice made Bulma turn around, for a second there the scorn in her expression shifted with embarrassment but then she must have realized it was Roshi that she was embarrassed about speaking ill of and that blush in her cheeks cleared out like clouds after the rain. "Makes me wonder how you'll be speaking of me after I die…" the old geezer acted out wiping off a fake tear off his cheek.

"That will never happen though… You'll probably live forever… I'm never getting the house…" Umigame lamented in a joking manner, although the dry delivery made everyone around the sea turtle freeze and stare at it for a moment before the context of his words caught on to them.

"Not if I train as intensely as I do now! Martial arts, nourishment to body and soul, is the true mystery behind human longevity!" Muten Roshi posed proudly.

"And not that Paradise Herb you've been scolding in your tea?" Umigame wondered, jesting again, with much more mean-spirit this time, however.

"That was just a phase, you scaly flopper!" Muten Roshi flipped out on his cohabitant. "Back then I thought that I was the strongest person alive so I stopped training and ate the herb for energy…"

"So that's why you didn't attend the last World Martial Arts Tournament?" Goku pointed at Roshi, "Because you were getting rusty? That explains a whole lot!"

"Indeed. I feel as grateful for you two… Three… Four, at times… For inspiring the fighting spirit back into my old bones as you should feel for all the priceless lessons I left you with." Muten Roshi posed with arms over his hips.

"The World Martial Arts Tournament final rounds will begin momentarily. The eight chosen participants, please proceed to the main tournament hall!"

"There we go!" Krillin turned to the direction of the main hall. "Don't you guys want to get a better seat to see our fights from though?"

"Don't worry, that's what our friend Launch is here for!" Oolong turned to the shapeshifter with a devious smirk but then took a step back when he noticed stacks of navy-blue hair scattering in the wind instead of the blond form that he was counting on.

"Oh… Is that a gun in my hand!?" Launch jumped back and screamed out, dropping the semi-automatic handgun she was clenching in her hand before transforming. One that the group was counting would get them the best seats in the house.

"Oh, brother…" Oolong shook his head. "Well… Plan B…" he turned to Puar.

The two nodded and poofed in synchrony. From the clouds of smoke turned up a robot filled up with ax-blades from head to toe and an anthropomorphic saber-tooth tiger wielding a scimitar and classic Chinese-style clothes. Puar even went the extra mile of having one of his eyes be cut up, requiring a patch as well as an extravagant pipe smoking in between his lips.

"Alright, you nerds, move aside or get squished!" Oolong shook his body, clanging all the ax-blades he wore at once like a dinosaur with a spiky back or mace for a tail. Puar was much less skilled in intimidation tactics and about as convincing in his attempts to frighten the audience as blue-haired Launch but he still had intimidating size working for him.

Goku huffed and heaved while performing upside down, one-finger push-ups. Krillin and Yamcha didn't look too intimidated by the rather extreme exercise chosen for warm-ups nor by the fact that Goku had long since lost count.

"I sure hope we don't get lumped together by the lottery." Krillin looked at Yamcha with a smile. The boy looked confident despite being surrounded by fighters against whom his chances would have been questionable. He might have meant that it would have been fortunate for everybody else but him…

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the two monsters survived but… I must say, I counted on you two taking the fall in the preliminaries." Tenshinhan approached the cluster of finalists assembled in the main hall with Chiaotzu by his side, as always.

"Why's that?" Yamcha looked at the three-eyed martial artist with some respectful fear in his eyes. Unlike Krillin, this Earthling knew his odds, he evaluated himself realistically, even in the light of his massive recent growth in power. Tenshinhan was an oddity amongst Earthlings to be certain to the point where his strength alarmed even Chayote. Not necessarily his strength itself, more that an Earthling was able to become as strong as Tenshinhan had gotten while originating from underneath Taopaipai's oppressive foot.

This one truly was a talent, everything Baba promised and more…

"Maybe because that's what Turtle School does. Tsuru Sennin told us all about his rival before we abandoned him. Kame Sennin trains himself in solitude because he likes entertaining the delusions of how strong he truly is. There's nothing like real life to make shoddily folded steel crumble into a useless heap of scrap." Tenshinhan spoke not from a position of elevation but with a more solemn look. He felt what he was preaching too. He himself must also have recently been humbled just like he projected onto the Turtle School… Humbled in a way that shook the very foundation of the way he saw himself as the part of the world around him.

"Doesn't get much more real than that…" Yamcha pointed his thumb at the unruly audience outside that waited for the matches to begin.

"Beating around the bush, just like Tsuru Sennin said." Chiaotzu squeaked.

"True. Though Tsuru Sennin was just as blind himself. Make no mistake, none of those people out there matter. What they see or think doesn't matter. Only strength and victory matter and I will achieve that, I'm ready to bet my pride as a martial artist on that!" Tenshinhan declared.

"Your pride seems to matter a great deal to you. See to it that you don't end up taking your own life once it's broken and there's nothing more left but the shell." Chayote stepped up to Tenshinhan while the two examined each other and sized their respective rival up.

"Alright, finalists, please assemble!" the ever-charismatic and irreplaceable announcer showed his face again by declaring the beginning of the lottery to the finalists. That way, the finals of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament had begun.


	41. I Strength Alone

"Monkey…" Chiaotzu uttered while pointing his finger at Goku.

"Huh?" Goku looked back at Chiaotzu. It was unclear if the boy just didn't get the concept of being called names that were meant to be demeaning or if he just didn't hear what the pipsqueak said to him.

"Monkey…" Chiaotzu repeated. His finger still pointing at Goku, like a rapier ready to thrust or a gun ready to fire.

"Oh, I'm not a monkey," Goku turned back and waggled his tail in front of Chiaotzu's face. "I've got a tail but I'm not a monkey. My grandpa used to say all boys had tails but now I've come to learn it's because I'm a Saiyan."

Chayote couldn't keep a straight face after seeing Goku triumph an attempt to jab at him by confronting it straight ahead and not losing his cool. Somehow, by taking the mockery dead seriously, he had managed to triumph over the bullying ghoul boy.

"Yeah, Goku's an alien, you should know a thing or that about that too, baldy, you look pretty extraterrestrial yourself…" Krillin leaned at Chiaotzu with a cringing face.

"I'm not bald, you're bald!" Chiaotzu pointed at Krillin.

"Ooh… Really showed him…" Yamcha crossed his arms over his chest and turned to Tenshinhan who began ignoring the jabbing session, considering himself above such childish exchanges but now was beginning to look increasingly embarrassed by the behavior of his undergrown friend.

"No, I'm serious…" Chiatozu looked up at Yamcha with that same, deadpan stare and removed his tight-fitting hat to reveal a single, spiraling hair that reached outward with the first sign of freedom it saw.

"Chiaotzu!" Tenshinhan lost his cool and forced the hat back over his head. "A martial artist is above such petty quarrels! A true martial artist solves his differences in an exchange of blows, not quips."

"Oh, there's no threat of any quips coming from your friend, don't worry," Yamcha replied with a smug look forcing the announcer to clean his throat.

"Did you guys hear a single word I said?" he shook his head in disbelief.

"Huh? Sorry, no…" Goku laughed out.

"Oh, you're participating this year too? Amazing, please do not decimate the island again…" the announcer turned to Goku before fixing his shades and going at it again. "Where was I…? Oh, yes… You'll be choosing your opponent and order with the aid of good, old, trusty lottery. When we call your name, please come forward and draw a slip."

Chayote closed her eyes and tried feeling up everyone in the room. Goku was the simplest standout. His power level soared above the rest and it was still most likely suppressed. Tenshinhan was second, though his power level was suppressed far further than Goku's. The full extent of either of their abilities would require a thorough punch-out to determine. Yamcha and Krillin seemed around equal and almost measuring up to Goku's power level. They, however, didn't seem too likely to know how Ki suppression worked or cared too much to suppress their power yet. Chiaotzu was a complete mystery. His power level seemed like barely above that of a mere Earthling.

Surely that couldn't have been right, someone who trained with Tenshinhan all those years should have had a power level hundreds of times above that which he was irradiating.

"All right, let's start with Jackie Chun-san…" announcer read out from his list.

"Present and at your service…" Jackie Chun nodded.

"Ooh…" Chayote felt vibrations coming off from Tenshinhan's side. He was muttering with Chiaotzu at the moment. Something in secret…

"He is no ordinary old man. We've got enough secret factors to consider in this tournament, pair him up with some other fighter that could draw out his moves." Tenshinhan looked at Chiaotzu.

Pair him up? What did he mean? Could Chiaotzu somehow manipulate the lots? How was that possible?

"Hmmm… On the other hand, pair him up with that wolf guy over there." Tenshinhan asked Chiaotzu who smiled while keeping his eyes in the same, doll-like position. There was not even a twitch in the tiny zombie boy's eyebrows.

"Ok…" Chiaotzu replied. He extended his finger, just like he did when he mocked Goku. Due to her intense concentration on the pair, the entire world outside them turned to a black shroud but Chayote could feel the escalating elevation on Chiaotzu's power level while a resonance of light came out from his fingers.

"I'm number 4, it seems…" Jackie Chun nodded to himself.

"That would be match two." The announcer penned Jackie Chun onto the board. "Next up is Yamcha."

"Yes." Yamcha nodded and approached the box.

"I'm going to introduce this guy to the reality of the world outside martial arts schools." Tenshinhan declared to the level where only Chiaotzu could hear him, Chiaotzu and anyone with supernatural powers of psychic awareness, like Chayote.

Once more the psychic resonances left Chiaotzu's fingers, betraying the peak of his true power for a brief moment while he used his unnatural technique.

"Oh, hey, look… No. 1, just like my position in the pecking order!" Yamcha smirked while showing his piece of paper to the rest of the crew who acknowledged his jest with smirks.

Chayote didn't particularly fancy this little asshole messing with the lot drawing process but given how Tenshinhan likely subscribed to the same Earthling beliefs of leaving the best fight for last, he was more than likely to wish to face Chayote last, which meant that this was just a minor inconvenience for her that would result ending up all the same. She'd have likely left the lots for the random chaotic order of drawing lots just for the fun of surprise but… Interfering now would be too much trouble, plus, the little shrimp might have gotten himself disqualified if Chayote exposed him.

That would not have been right. They both deserved a thorough beating and his powers did somewhat intrigue the grown Saiyan.

"Well, well… Chayote." The announcer read out the name of the last tournament's winner and Chayote approached the box. She had her eyes closed and concentration fully engaged when her hand went in, she wanted to hear what Tenshinhan would have to say about her.

"Hmmm… That tiny baldy seemed pretty arrogant, have him hit a brick wall with the face of his own friend." Tenshinhan shrugged.

"Ok." Chiaotzu nodded and worked his magic.

Chayote showed her piece of paper, proudly displaying the number 7 on it.

"Tenshinhan."

"Here. I'm leaving it to you…" Tenshinhan looked down at Chiaotzu.

"Yup," the shrimp replied.

"No. 2…" Tenshinhan turned right at Yamcha, showing off his piece of paper like a contract that spelled out doom for his opponent.

Yamcha seemed calm. He must have known that physically he was outmatched but he must have counted on the skill in martial arts being the deciding factor. Too bad, if Baba's description of Tenshinhan was anything to go by, Yamcha would find little to no solace in that comparison either. Still, Yamcha's power was at a point where he would not go down without a fight.

"Being someone who has been in your position of high self-esteem only to be taken to school. I pity you." Tenshinhan spoke to Yamcha without even looking at his opponent in the first round of the finals.

"I know a girl who's a brilliant inventor. You should meet her, maybe she'll find a way to make money out of sheer pride. In that case, you won't need to fight once for the rest of your life." Yamcha replied.

"Krillin!"

"Yo!" Krillin rushed up to the lots. "Number 8." He read out.

"Match four then… Wolf Man!" the announcer said.

"You sound like one of Baba's fighters." Chayote looked at the curious, blue werewolf in a red-orange gi. "How come I haven't met you?"

"What did you call me, you bastard!?" the Wolf Man growled. "Name's Man-Wolf! Do you think I'm some sort of a monster!? A Wolf Man is a savage beast, a man that turns into a wolf in the light of a full moon. I turn into a human upon full moon's light, have it nailed into your stupid heads!?"

"V-Very well, if you could just… Draw the slip." The announcer bowed in an apology of his mix-up, honestly, it wasn't the first time that the guy messed up with basic reading, to Chayote, it was part of his charm. Man-Wolf didn't waste time growling when rushing past Jackie Chun.

"Yes! Number 3!" the Man-Wolf roared out in pure ecstasy as the announcer penned the bestial competitor down by Jackie Chun's name on the board.

"Geheheheh! I'll have my bloody vengeance at long last!" Man-Wolf stared at Jackie Chun with his fangs exposed, ready to jump at the poor old man and maul him at any point but reserving just enough humanity to keep it together for now.

"Hmmm… Why is he so excited to fight someone on a whole other league like Jackie Chun?" Goku wondered.

"You, of all people, should not be asking that question, Kakarot." Chayote replied.

"As long as he doesn't hump my leg, I'm fine." Jackie Chun shrugged.

"Next… Ummm… Chow-Two." The announcer appeared particularly baffled by the name of the next competitor.

"You're wrong, it's Chiaotzu," Chiaotzu fixed the announcer without any hint of usual vitriol that took over anyone who had their names butchered by the announcer.

"Ah, I see, please advance to the lots." The announcer waited until Chiaotzu drew the lots and showed his slip to the audience. "No. 5. That means you will be fighting in the third match. I guess that means that contestant Son Goku will face Chiaotzu in the third match."

"Huh? How would you know that? Did Fortuneteller Baba teach you psychic abilities too?" Goku wondered and ran up to the box, shuffling through the one remaining slip of paper before pulling it out and showing it to everyone. "Wow! You're right! You're so amazing!"

"Hmmm… He is stronger than you, Chiaotzu, be careful. However, your psychic abilities should give you enough of an advantage to win." Tenshinhan instructed his friend.

"Sure." Chiaotzu nodded.

"Here are the rules," the announcer approached the matchboard. "The tournament finals will consist of single-round fights with no time limit. If you fall out of bounds, are knocked out for a 10-count, or plead mercy, you lose. When you hear your name called on the loudspeakers, please approach the arena."

"Mister, mister!" Goku ran up to the announcer and shook by his hip. "When can we have something to eat!?"

"Oh, that's right… I'll have something cooked up for the two of you at once." The announcer looked at Goku and Chayote.

"Awesome work, Chiaotzu." Tenshinhan complimented his little friend who answered by staring off into the distance with a lifeless stare and a dollish smile.

"Man… I ended up facing Chayote!" Krillin flailed his hands about. "In the first rounds no less!"

"You should not complain. You were so eager to show the fruits of your training! Consider this your karma. Besides, you don't always get to choose your opponents in real life too!" Jackie Chun scolded Krillin.

"Huh? You sound so much like Muten Roshi…" Krillin pointed out.

"Not this old thing again!" Jackie looked the other way.

"Hey, hey! How about you start the fights already!" the audience grew unruly outside, some of the wild shouts reached even the contestants indoors.

Drums rumbled outside before the gong rung, at long last, the finals of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament have begun. The announcer appeared putting all of the rising spirit of unease amongst the audience to rest. This man and his milky, underdeveloped mustache sure could manipulate a crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your patience! We are now ready to present to you… The World Martial Arts Tournament!" the announcer lived up to his title, much to the roaring cheer of the audience.

"182 martial artists of profound skill entered the preliminary rounds… From them, only eight finalists have emerged! They will now do battle before you to determine who will claim the prize of 500 000 Zeni! Who truly will be chosen by fate as the Strongest Under the Heavens!?" like a charismatic dictator, the announcer raised his fist up into the air and focused on gesticulation. "Let us waste no more time before starting the first match! Allow Contestant Yamcha and Contestant Tenshinhan to open up the tournament finals!"

The audience rustled and cheered, they knew Yamcha from the previous tournament already. Whoever had their hats with them threw them into the sky, it was not that much due to the significance of Yamcha taking the stage but more so due to the beginning of an experience one must have been through before they could claim they have had a satisfying life – the World Martial Arts Tournament.

"It's him! It's Yamcha-sama!" Puar went wild, floating around the rest of the gang in the audience seats.

"Hmph… He better win, after abandoning me with that old coot to train alone!" two cinders blazed in Bulma's eyes as she observed Yamcha and Tenshinhan walk out parallel to each other.

"FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" went the audience.

"Let's see if you have the fists to back up all that mean talk." Yamcha gave Tenshinhan a sly glance.

"I'll give you more fists than you can handle," Tenshinhan replied.

"In a world-shaking turn of events, half of the finalists have come from the Turtle School of the master martial artist – Kame Sen'nin himself! Contestant Yamcha is one of those four!" the announcer gestured at Yamcha. "What's even more surprising, a quarter of them is comprised of disciples of Kame Sen'nin's rival school of martial arts, the school led by the illusive Tsuru Sen'nin! Contestant Tenshinhan is one of those amazing two!"

"Don't lie!" Tenshinhan yelled out, angered at the announcer's declaration. "Chiaotzu and I have abandoned Tsuru Sen'nin to pursue strength on our own. We are our own martial artists and our pride will not allow that old, weak fool to take credit for what we have earned with our own two hands!"

"They really shouldn't have lumped me in with that ancient flea-bag…" Jackie Chun grit his teeth in the backstage area.

"Who's going to win!? Turtle or Crane!? I can't wait!" the audience cheered with these, or similar sentiments.

"Good luck, Yamcha-sama! Show 'em who's the best!" Puar flew up as high as he could so that Yamcha could see and hear him.

"Oh, don't you worry, Puar, guys… This guy won't be a piece of cake but… I didn't train with Korin-sama for nothing!" Yamcha shot his eyes wide open and removed all traces of smugness and vanity from his eyes. He was now prepared to duke it out with his opponents as if they had never met before and had no background whatsoever with one another.

"Even the God of Martial Arts cannot prepare you enough to face a man who has claimed his own strength!" Tenshinhan took a fighting stance and turned serious as well.

"Gentlemen, begin!" the announcer declared the beginning of the match as the gong tolled in the offstage area beside the fighting ring.

Yamcha tightened his stance, he did not wish to open up and rush ahead at an opponent he had no comprehension of. It might have been a welcome approach, not to rush at one's own defeat, however… If Tenshinhan opened up with a flurry of blows oppressive enough, the sheer difference in power and speed would have ended up the match prematurely! The best option, clearly, would have been not to step into the ring with a superior opponent but that was not the type of martial artist that Yamcha was.

As the two dashed, Tenshinhan straight at his opponent, Yamcha diagonally to the side, to have Tenshinhan come at him from a diagonal and highly uncomfortable angle which would have left plenty of openings but also limited how freely the three-eyed warrior could attack his opponent, Chayote understood the role of martial arts better. To these Earthlings, it was a way to overcome their cowardice. Earthlings were cowardly and weak by design, however, through martial arts and the core principles uniting the entire concept, they could rise above that weakness.

Martial arts taught one to seek self-improvement without stopping. To never run away from a challenge and to act honorably. All of these things were within their nature to a Saiyan, however, Earthlings had to learn that by studying martial arts. Well… Saiyans had a unique sense of honor and they couldn't quite wrap their heads around the concepts of honor in the way that martial artists of Earth could, but they replaced the concept of honor with pride.

Just like an honorable Earthling would not attack a sick and weak opponent, a proud Saiyan warrior would not either, not because such a thing was honorable but because there was nothing to challenge and be proud of in defeating a half-dead opponent. A Saiyan grew in power through challenge and adversity and finishing off a crippled half-corpse carried no risks of ever growing stronger from that experience. Just like Upa said back then, it was not a matter of good and evil, it was all just heaps of grey… Only behaviors could have been judged that way.

Yamcha's diagonal approach served its fruit. With a two-handed thrust, Yamcha found an opening and hit Tenshinhan straight in the right side of his ribs, throwing the three-eyed combatant off-balance. Quickly stepping in and confronting his opponent straight, Yamcha unleashed a flurry of wolf-paw strikes at Tenshinhan, all of them found their mark, Tenshinhan appeared overwhelmed and could only clutch up and defend himself, hoping that none of the strikes hit anything vital.

"Yeah! Go, Yamcha!" Krillin jumped up, pumping his fist up.

"Don't be so quick to celebrate, it seems you can't see right with both your eyes open…" Chayote tried grounding Krillin back down from his premature celebration.

"Yeah," Goku nodded. "Look at how many strikes Yamcha's getting in and Tenshinhan's barely even fazed, it's like his body is just taking it all in, with so many strikes, Yamcha hasn't knocked his opponent off his feet yet."

"Kyah!" Tenshinhan unleashed a wild shout and an invisible bubble of Ki that threw Yamcha's back on his butt, confused by the unnatural method of defense, Yamcha rolled on his back and got back on his feet.

"Wow, Yamcha got so many licks in and Tenshinhan was still the first one to knock Yamcha down…" Goku admired the three-eyed fighter from afar. His usually goofy attitude turned a tad more serious once he acknowledged the early exchange that usually set the pace for the rest of the match.

"Yeah, Yamcha needs either a serious ace in the hole or some trickery to get through this…" Chayote agreed.

"Don't you guys worry, Yamcha's got a little bit of both!" Krillin raised his fist up and cheered on his training partner.

* * *

_**Author's Note: Plenty of fans of Dragon Ball have noticed (and not in a good light) that Goku never really shared a line with Chiaotzu in the original Dragon Ball (I think in Z too, though I'm not too sure about that). So... Yeah, had to fix that as soon as I had the chance to. I feel like having Goku face Chiaotzu in the 22nd BT both sort of fixes that, results in a much more satisfying experience than Goku VS Pamputto and it also has Goku get a bit more hands-on role in the tournament where he's kind of an observer, which is never a good sign. **_

_**Of course, the con of that idea is the sacrifice of Goku VS Krillin... While that's sad, I never intended to "fix" the original work or to make it somehow better than the original with my own spin on it. I was always just penning down a supplementary, fun side story that I wanted to tell so it's not like I'm removing that fight from existence, I'm just changing things around. Who knows, maybe I'll pay that absence off in the future? **_

_**Sure, Krillin won't technically beat a minor villain of the arc, but he doesn't really need to ATM since he and Yamcha beat the last boss of the last arc so they've had plenty of good showings for the moment. **_


	42. Armbars That Seal and Armbars That Heal

Tenshinhan's body moved in a controlled dash forward. He was restraining his speed. It was not as if he was purposefully holding himself back to get punished or underestimating his opponent, in fact, it may have been the other case. Tenshinhan was giving Yamcha the benefit of the doubt after the initial burst of offense and holding defensive options while not putting too much weight on his rushing foot.

Yamcha placed his hands out together in a position similar to the one of a completed Kamehameha. Tenshinhan's elbow butted against Yamcha's hands and like an experienced constrictor, Yamcha proceeded to transition from a successful block into an armbar by twisting Tenshinhan's elbow behind him. Tenshinhan thrust his free arm down for support and balance while both of his feet shot upward behind him. While Yamcha avoided getting blasted up into the air by such an improvised lower body offense, it still forced him to release the hold prematurely.

Despite that, he was not about to let Tenshinhan catch his breath and rethink his approach. Yamcha launched another flurry of his wolf-fang style palm strikes, forcing Tenshinhan on the defensive again. Yamcha's striking power was considerable, to be able to hurt someone like Tenshinhan would have required many days to be spent peeling layers off of hardened underground minerals with one's bare hands as an entry-level exercise of strength.

When martial artists began their training, they fashioned their attacks after animals for self-encouragement. Claiming one was as fast as a wolf would have sounded amazing to one just starting out. Truthfully, Yamcha's grip and striking strength had long since scattered the ashes of a mere wolf's bite in the wind. Not even the largest dinosaur alive could likely match the strength of Yamcha's grip, anything less than that which he had and Tenshinhan would have laughed his attacks off.

"Agh! He's getting close to the edge!" Goku pointed out. He was right, Yamcha might have been counting on something like that. It would have given him no joy to win that way but it would have surely silenced all that tough talk from Tenshinhan's side to be eliminated in such a lame way before one had a chance to show their true strength.

Tenshinhan's hands struck with the swiftness of a cobra strike. His upper arm and forearm did not leave the blocking posts but his hands reached out for Yamcha's head managed to wrap their fingers around it, like an automaton, diving the belfry downward while his knee shot up with the impact sound detonating like a shotgun blast. All focus and aggression left Yamcha's eyes for a second, he might have whited out a tad bit there but he regained his composure and vaulted backward a bunch for some safe distance. Tenshinhan allowed that, having just won this breather for himself.

"I'll apologize." Tenshinhan straightened his body out, breaking his fighting stance all of a sudden. "It was arrogant and rude of me to be surprised that someone like you could not have gotten past the garbage level of competition from the preliminaries. You are a true martial artist and your level of skill deserves respect."

Chayote scratched her head. This young man did not speak anything like what she'd have imagined an avenger out to get her for killing his mentor to sound. Nor did he sound anything like his mentor. Taopaipai was a snake who would have kicked the head off of his own mother to attain victory yet somehow he might have raised a martial artist with the utmost respect for martial arts and every value they represented.

"Well, I won't lie, I might have looked down on you a bit as well…" Yamcha kept on stroking his forehead in the spot where he was just kneed to. His head was beginning to swell and such a strike would have kicked any lesser man outright in a less than sanitary way. "When I heard you've trained with Tsuru Sen'nin, a rival of Muten Roshi's, I thought you'd be a step behind my level of skill. If I had stayed and trained with Muten Roshi for the last three years, that last kick would have finished me off then and there…"

"Well then, now that we have moved past that, let us fight for as long as our bodies can support an all-out fight." Tenshinhan returned to a fighting stance. His eyes were dead-serious and accepting of any outcome that his fists and lightning-legs would have wrought and were Chayote not absolutely sure of her own terrifying strength, she'd have been intimidated by such a stare without any question.

The man was not even staring at her right now, how petrifying it must have felt to Yamcha, someone who spent a decent amount of time hitting this three-eyed baldy with everything he had and only seeing mere scratches on the skin of Tenshinhan's arms.

Tenshinhan's body disappeared, Yamcha's glare sharpened, he did not lose focus but Tenshinhan's sudden reappearance right in front of him, airborne with a flying knee strike surprised the martial artist. Another roar of thunder followed by Yamcha's grunt. The master of the Wolf Fang Fist spent the last couple of offensive stretches trying to throw Tenshinhan off of his impeccable footwork, Tenshinhan did it with a sonic boom in a single focused attack – Yamcha was airborne.

The self-tempered martial artist was not about to stop his attacks just because his opponent was hurt and thrown off his feet. With eyes every bit as ruthless as before, Tenshihan hopped up and positioned himself just above Yamcha with a downward-pointing elbow strike. His elbow went straight through a rippling afterimage as Yamcha was not where Tenshinhan's knee strike left him in the beginning.

"Ka-Me!" Yamcha grunted from the other end of the ring. That knee strike hit him straight in the face and his forehead was now busted open and bleeding an alarming amount, it was a work finishing up from Tenshinhan's previous attack. It made sense he'd do that, given the knowledge that he was trained by a master assassin. "Ha-Me!"

"Oh! Contestant Yamcha is about to use the signature technique of the Turtle School! The Kamehameha!" the announcer declared.

Tenshinhan flicked his finger. A painful memory snapped in Chayote's head making her jump up in unease and only manage to muzzle her scream at the last second. She was about to yell for Yamcha to be careful but then she noticed that Tenshinhan had lowered his finger. He decided not to punish his opponent this way but instead to take the Kamehameha head-on. As someone who employed a similar strategy in the last tournament, Chayote fully knew that mindset. If Kamehameha was Yamcha's best shot, something he resorted to after an opening, taking it head-on and then shrugging it off would have crushed his fighting spirit altogether.

"Ha!" Yamcha did not falter, choosing to unleash a mighty Kamehameha wave at the enemy Tenshinhan decided to just stand there and take it. He placed his hands by his sides and blew out his chest. The three-eyed warrior tempered his body like a little bar of iron. The Kamehameha hit it like a wet slipper hitting a brick wall, it bounced off of him almost in the same vein.

"It… Didn't work?" Yamcha's look faltered. All that bravado from before gave way to shock and awe.

"I had learned to deal with that wet fart of a technique back when I still trained with the Tsuru Sen'nin. It was one of the first things he taught me." Tenshinhan relaxed his body. He appeared to have taken less damage from that blast than he did from Yamcha's previous attacks. "I can only wonder if Kame Sen'nin did the same…"

Tenshinhan's finger went right back up. A faint flicker of light left it. A protective wall behind Yamcha exploded as if from pent up inside it pressure, throwing a pair of spectators off their feet and sending them on the ground. Quivering for their lives. Yamcha looked at the rustled audience with a sense of dread. He had taken it to the air, instinctively, he had no time to think his movements through or consider what might have happened to the audience behind him, he just dodged for his life, just because he felt like if he didn't – he'd certainly die.

"Hmm… I see that you are not completely hopeless. Leaving Kame Sen'nin and training with another mentor may have been the best decision you've ever made." Tenshinhan commended his opponent.

"I'll make you eat those words with the spin-off technique I've honed still on Kame Island – Neo Wolf Fang Fist!" Yamcha yelled out before shooting right back down at Tenshinhan with a divekick. Tenshinhan smirked and blew out his chest again. He couldn't have possibly intended to take Yamcha's flurry the same way he stonewalled the Kamehameha!

Yamcha's foot hit an impenetrable wall in the shape of Tenshinhan's chest. Not letting his unsuccessful attack impede him too much, Yamcha unleashed a flurry of downward kicks from an upward position, as if attempting to stomp Tenshinhan to the ground but none of those attacks achieved much at all. With a backflip, Yamcha threw himself a fair distance further back and then dashed straight at Tenshinhan with his arms in the modified Wolf Fang Fist position.

"The control of his Ki has sky-rocketed since I've last seen him. Tenshinhan better not try and take this attack head-on, not even he could do something like that." Jackie Chun observed from the sidelines, stroking his beard.

A twin-snapping sound cut Yamcha's big attack short. The master of the Wolf Fang Fist tried moving his arms but found them fixed in place with Tenshinhan's hands locked firmly on his wrists.

"That's the problem of focusing on a flurry of blows…" Tenshinhan smirked. "Now you can't do any of that…"

The three-eyed baldy was quick to punish his overly aggressive opponent with a brutal headbutt, further deepening Yamcha's forehead wound and making his opponent white out. While Yamcha already looked quite lifeless and barely offered any resistance, Tenshinhan bent his head back for another go. When his head moved forward, however, it did not meet Yamcha's soft and mushy forehead, it hit the brick-tough resistance of Yamcha's knee.

"Should have restrained my feet as well!" Yamcha snapped back at his opponent while making sure to kick and thrust his foot all over the exposed upper body of Tenshinhan. Too bad for him, his kicks and stomps were nowhere near as hard as his strikes and Tenshinhan's body was hardy like iron. Using the moment of shock in Yamcha's expression after a few completely ineffective kicks, Tenshinhan stomped at Yamcha's feet.

"Like this?" he asked with a mocking tone. Tenshinhan cocked his head back for another headbutt. He grunted halfway through it when Yamcha threw his restrained hands, still in Tenshinhan's lock in the way, making Tenshinhan sort of punch himself in the face that way. Using the moment of daze in his opponent, Yamcha twisted his wrists and alleviated the pressure of his opponent's hold, skillfully maneuvering out of it and freeing himself.

"Amazing! Simply amazing!" the announcer boomed into the microphone. "Who knew that these two competitors could put up such an incredible opening match! Every exchange is like fine artistry, every move is a demonstration of every advancement in martial arts humanity has achieved throughout its existence! Simply exhilarating, ladies and gentlemen!"

"Teehee, Yamcha's pretty amazing!" Krillin nodded to himself in the sidelines.

"Between the two of you, which one is stronger?" Chayote wondered, floating in her flying state beside the two boys that still used pull-ups to see the fight taking place in the ring.

"I don't know, we're pretty much equal. We've never sparred seriously, kept it for the tournament to make it more exciting." Krillin shrugged. He must have known why Chayote asked this. She would be fighting Krillin in the final match of the quarter-finals after all. A bit of information about the level of competition compared to Yamcha's level in the first match would not have hurt.

"Ka-Me!" Yamcha cupped his hands and placed them aside.

"Huh? Have I struck your head that hard? You've already tried that!" Tenshinhan mocked his opponent.

"Oh! It seems like contestant Yamcha is trying the Kamehameha once more!" the announcer turned at the audience. "The first one didn't seem all that effective, perhaps he is counting on the wear and tear of the battle to have chipped through Tenshinhan's body, making him more susceptible to the attack now!?"

"Ha-Me!" Yamcha chanted again before throwing his hands out. "Ha!" he yelled out. The Kamehameha wave blasted off from his hands and beamed right at Tenshinhan with its signature howl and all-consuming azure light. Tenshinhan threw his hands aside and blew out his chest again but it was only met with a confident grin from Yamcha's side who let go of his beam and appeared to grab hold of his end of the Ki wave. With a yoink, Yamcha manipulated the flow of the beam to go over Tenshinhan's head and then pulled the beam back.

"What the…!?" Tenshinhan grunted when the beam slammed right into his back and blew him off his feet. After the blast had settled and the smoke had cleared, all the rubble had found its way on the shaken ring, Tenshinhan was on one knee with a smoking and bruised back.

"Threw you off after all…" Yamcha wiped his nose with his thumb.

Tenshinhan clenched his fists and pressed them to his sides so hard that his entire body began to bulge. Veins popped out on the baldy's forehead and his grit teeth seemed like they'd pop the opposing line of teeth right out. Tenshinhan's finger shot out, unleashing a Dodonpa that was unlike the mere flicker of light from before, this one was a singular and focused beam, more akin to what Chayote saw Taopaipai use.

"Now who's predictable…?" a voice echoed through the fighting ring when a hole appeared in Yamcha's rippling afterimage.

Yamcha charged at Tenshinhan from the side. Striking him a with a flurry of his Neo Wolf Fang strikes but when Tenshinhan tried returning the favor he only dispelled another afterimage.

"That Kamehameha… It did a number of Tenshinhan's power level." Chayote noted. "Evened the odds a little bit. Yamcha's lucky that Tenshinhan doesn't want to show any of his moves so early on. That's why he's struggling."

"True but… What bothers me is that despite Tenshinhan taking such a massive hit, he is still ahead in terms of speed, strength, and toughness." Jackie Chun observed. "All Yamcha can do is just hit and run and all the hitting he's doing doesn't seem to be having much of an effect."

"Y-Yamcha, don't approach him again!" Goku yelled out with an alarmed tone that Chayote rarely heard him use.

"You fool! My third eye sees right through!" Tenshinhan grunted after leaning aside and then clutching Yamcha's arm after an attempted punch in his armpit.

"Even you don't have eyes at the back of your head!" Yamcha grit his teeth in pain from the pressure of his furious opponent as he attempted to strike at the back of Tenshinhan's head but found his punch slipping through the air as well and under the other armpit of his opponent.

"Damn it, get out of there, Yamcha!" Goku slammed the top of the protective wall at the side of the ring from which he was hanging and observing the battle.

"You're quite a hardy martial artist. You would not allow this battle to end quickly, normally, I would not want that either. However, given the charade of me having to fight while holding most of my moves back, I find little use from humoring you any further. I've decided to end this now." Tenshinhan spoke with a tone that was calming down with every successive word. He needed this brief explanation just as much as his confused and struggling opponent. With a decisive upwards flex, followed by a gut-wrenching snapping sound, Tenshinhan let go of Yamcha's arms and walked a few paces forward.

Yamcha collapsed on his knees, howling in pain as his arms bent the opposite direction like flabby jelly. They were only broken in one, matching place but this injury was debilitating enough to end the battle prematurely. The announcer did a quick count to ten, quickened out of mercy for Yamcha's suffering but it was just an unnecessary formality because Chayote, Krillin, Jackie Chun, Goku, Puar, Bulma and the rest had rushed onto the stage long before the end of the count.

"Treat it as a white towel…" Tenshinhan stated with a cold look at the announcer.

"Yamcha! Yamcha!" Goku kept shaking Yamcha by his shoulders, which, frankly, Chayote wasn't sure was helping at all. Chayote leaned and picked Yamcha up.

"It's okay, I'll take him to the hospital." She declared. "Dark Kinto!"

It's been a while since she's called on the Dark Kinto but in her early stage of the flying technique mastery, she'd be unable to move fast enough with a passenger. It barely sustained a controlled flight and she needed efficiency that only the Dark Kinto may have provided. Chayote took a light hop with Yamcha still in hands and found her feet touching the ground a moment later with Yamcha thudding against the floor not too long after.

"What are you doing!?" Puar lost his shit and began pounding at Chayote's forehead with its puny arms. "You're hurting Yamcha-sama even more!"

"I… Phased right through?" Chayote turned back at Dark Kinto that still waited for its owner to take their place on it and ride it.

"Never mind that," Krillin sighed. He pulled out a pouch from his side and removed a bean from it, placing it in Yamcha's mouth. As if knowing what to do, Yamcha chewed on it and his grunts of pain, as well as his breathing, fixed themselves before everybody's eyes.

"Huh? Weren't those just ordinary Senzu?" Goku wondered.

"Yeah, they're not just for filling you up with food, they can heal people too…" Krillin nodded. "When we left the Korin Tower we took a pouch each and had hoped to use them during emergencies only but… I suppose this might suffice, somewhat."

"Thanks, Krillin." Yamcha nodded while he stretched out his arms that were broken and hanging flabby the other way than they were supposed to bend.

"Are you sure those beans even work that way? Maybe Yamcha should still check into the hospital?" Chayote wondered. "You know, just in case…"

"I don't think that's necessary, really…" Yamcha shrugged. "We haven't yet used the Senzu this way but… We're pretty sure that's how they work…"

"I mean… If that's the case, then you won't be gone for long, you might miss the old geezer's fight at best. You'll be back before the interesting stuff starts." Chayote insisted. Everyone glared at the Saiyan weird. Being the focus of attention like that made her eyes race across the bunch and back a handful of times. There went her cool vibe that she tried putting together…

"Alright, alright… I guess it won't hurt knowing for sure." Yamcha shrugged. "Though I'm telling you, it's kind of pointless."

The gang stared at Chayote and Yamcha leaving for the Papaya Hospital on foot. Chayote didn't see them stare but she could almost feel it, it didn't even require any of her superhuman perception abilities to know that. They were staring all the way until the pair mixed into the crowd.

"Was it really okay just letting those two walk off like that?" Bulma wondered with a grumpy expression on her face.

"Why not, jealous!?" Oolong teased the inventor.

"As if!" Bulma pounded the anthropomorphic pig at the top of its head and continued to try and drill her fist right through Oolong's head. "I'm just worried Chayote might miss her match, that's all!"

"But Chayote's the last one to go." Goku pointed out with a blank expression, he was not used to correcting Bulma. "There's no way she'll be missing the fight."


	43. Possible Ghouls but no Goblins

"Oh, hello, you're in the Tournament, aren't you?" a nurse sitting in the reception smiled at Chayote and Yamcha, directing her eyes at the outfits that would have normally seemed odd had it not been for the most hectic season that Papaya Island saw once in every three years.

"Now isn't the time for that, Earthling healer, my friend needs a full body medical check-up to see if the fight didn't do more damage than we know." Chayote slammed her open palm at the reception desk and gestured at Yamcha who just smiled for the nurse in discomfort and waved his hands in front of him.

"Umm… Well…" the nurse chewed on words.

"Don't mind him behaving out of ordinary, he isn't comfortable around women, that's why he's being so weird." Chayote leaned over the reception table, imposing on the nurse to stop mumbling and start acting.

"I'm… Not the one who's being weird…" Yamcha laughed out before approaching Chayote and pulling her away from the reception table. His touch on her shoulders felt strangely soft. The Saiyan wondered if he was so intimidated by Chayote that physical comfort was still not a certainty he could have taken for granted.

"A full body examination…" the nurse began hammering at the keyboard with nervous taps. After a pair of clicks on the moving gadget on her right side, sheets of paper began coming out a remote end at the other side of the corridor. "I hope that this young man isn't a competitor… This will take a while."

"Of course, he's just been eliminated but he fought adequately for an Earthling." Chayote nodded a couple of times.

"You might wanna ease up on the Earthling talk…" Yamcha leaned up to Chayote's ear. "You don't have to lie but you don't have to give them details they don't care about that also make you stand out."

"So how long will the examination take? Time isn't of concern to my friend but I need to go back to the arena for my fight in an hour or so…" Chayote tapped her palm at the reception table again, something that appeared to unnerve the nurse and force Yamcha to lightly move her a little bit back again.

"Oh no… Something as extensive as that will take at least four to six hours." The nurse shrugged and ran off to return with a stack of blank forms for tests that measured up to around half her own size.

"See, Chayote, our technology isn't that advanced. Procedures take time, they'll need to test every body part and organ one at a time…" Yamcha shrugged. "Can we just stop this and go back? We might yet get to see Jackie Chun fight Man-Wolf if we hurry."

"Why are you asking me? If you don't want any tests done, just stand your ground and say so. Honestly, that is why Bulma dumped you." Chayote crossed her arms.

"Ummm… I thought it's been well established that I left her to train alone which caused a strain on our relationship." Yamcha blushed in front of the nurse who was now moving past the nervous phase and beginning to get engaged in the small-talk of the curious folks who were quite unlikely to even go through with the tests if the direction of their conversation was to be taken for granted.

"Trust me, your Earthling woman dumped you. Which is like… How does that even happen? If I wasn't more accustomed to your society, my mind would have been blown by such a concept…" Chayote sighed. She then waved her hand in front of the nurse woman, knocking the pile off of her table by accident. "I think we'll do with just testing Yamcha's arms, see if they're broken or if there's any permanent damage to his muscles. He'll never hold his woman steady if his hands got busted up."

"Will you be going through those tests?" the nurse woman looked up, she looked crushed in the beginning after seeing the forms scatter on the floor but by now she'd accepted that these two won't be giving her any chances of taking this day easy.

"Anything to get me out of here and stop Chayote from giving me relationship advice!" Yamcha took initiative just to have the nurse lady take him somewhere away from the reception area.

"Who could have anticipated such a wild ending for this grudge match!?" the announcer yelled into the microphone while an unsightly man ran his way past the crowd having just been hypnotized back to human form artificially. "There just won't be a dull moment in this tournament, it seems! Now for the next match, last year's finalist Son Goku from the Kame Sen'nin school of martial arts against Chiaotzu from the Tsuru Sen'nin school!"

The announcer jumped up and stumbled away from the unexpected appearance of Chiaotzu right behind him. The ghoulish boy had emitted a higher-pitched humming sound as if objecting to the way he was introduced.

"Umm… Oh… That's right, it seems I was mistaken, ladies and gentlemen, contestant Chiaotzu is actually self-taught. He trained with a fellow ex-student of the Tsuru Sen'nin and acquired his own uncanny strength that contestant Tenshinhan demonstrated in the first round!" the announcer corrected himself which caused Chiaotzu's bland face change into a creepy yet content smile. The little ghoul then changed his attention to his rival who was flexing right in front of him, doing stretches and handstand push-ups.

"Idiot." Chiaotzu pointed at Goku. The monkey boy lifted his head up and turned it to the right, curious as to why he was being verbally attacked. "That's not how you stand. You stand on your legs."

"Yeah, I know…" Goku pushed himself off with an explosive push-up and then landed on both feet, transitioning into waist stretches. "I'm just warming up for the fight!"

"Hmm…" Chiaotzu hummed while his face returned to the blank expression it carried before. When he was dissatisfied with the announcer's introduction. Upon the announcer declaring the start of the match and the gong ringing, Goku took his fighting stance as well.

"Have they started yet?" Yamcha wondered, walking up to Krillin and Jackie Chun.

"Just now. How was the hospital?" Krillin turned to Chayote and Yamcha who had just made their way to the fighters' area.

"Pointless…" Yamcha squinted. "Turns out the Senzu do exactly what they're supposed to…"

"That's not what I meant…" Krillin budged Yamcha's hip with his elbow with a sly squint of his own.

"I'm surprised they let you back in here." Tenshinhan declared levitating by the other wall. "Isn't this area meant for competitors only? Or did they feel so bad for you they made a one-time exception?"

Yamcha clenched his fists but before he could pour more fuel into the flame of their rivalry, the fight on the stage transitioned from the two martial artists just slowly moving around in their fighting poses to some actual combat. Chiaotzu extended his hands out. Goku twitched, still in his fighting pose. His training with his grandpa in the Otherworld really did help his concentration – before Goku would have broken his stance and dropped his guard in a heartbeat the moment something startled him.

"Nice one, Chiaotzu, don't hold back, this isn't an opponent you can defeat by fighting him on his terms…" Tenshinhan said.

Goku twitched out as if he had been smashed with a gigantic fly swatter. His entire body appeared to turn frozen in time, even his hair didn't move in the wind. His tail no longer waggled in a cautious manner it was before and he appeared to float in an unnatural manner in mid-air as his foot should not have been able to keep his body upright in the way Goku found it positioned.

Chiaotzu disappeared, appearing right up in Goku's face only to deliver a crushing kick to the boy's jaw and then disappear again. Upon getting kicked, the Saiyan regained control over his body but then found himself frozen again. The boy screamed out in pain as Chiaotzu flew right past him, hitting Goku in the back with his head, spinning like a drill. Chiaotzu threw a kick aimed backward but Goku caught it and spun Chiaotzu around in a mad Dragon Throw.

"You fool! You forgot to apply your Telekinesis that time!" Tenshinhan scolded Chiaotzu from the stands.

"S-Sorry, Ten-san…" Chiaotzu's mouth waggled as it appeared as if the little, pale fighter was about to break down crying.

"That move… What was that?" Goku coughed with his tongue sticking out. Chiaotzu's Telekinesis must have shortened his breath by paralyzing his chest as well.

"That's a bit like General Blue's move, isn't it?" Krillin wondered. "Though not as dangerous if the shrimp's gotta hold his hands up like that…"

"It's Psychokinesis." Chayote declared. "It is an advanced form of the ability to move objects with your mind. There are ample alien species that can use this ability."

"It's dirty, is what it is!" Yamcha clenched his fist, aiming his ire at Tenshinhan.

"Dirty? That's the way Chiaotzu fights. Would you tie your hand behind your back if I thought it was too filthy to protect against?" Tenshinhan glanced at Yamcha briefly, thinking himself and his friend a bit beyond such lowly criticism.

"No, it is a form of martial arts." Chayote shook her head. "Chiaotzu is still using his Ki to achieve this effect, you can overpower this technique or avoid it. If you time it right and avoid the user's perception and focus."

"You hear that, Goku!?" Krillin yelled out. "Just dodge it! Or overpower it!"

"Dodge what, exactly…" Goku mumbled to himself with a bit of a chuckle. He was not a fan of Chiaotzu's ability, as his facial expression clearly relayed, however, he didn't seem to consider it cheating either.

"Forget it, if Kakarot didn't learn to sense Ki in the Otherworld, it will be of no use trying to evade the Psychokinesis." Chayote taunted her fellow Saiyan, wondering if he would respond to such taunts the way a true Saiyan would – by going out of their way in the most reckless manner imaginable to prove those insults wrong.

Goku closed his eyes. He didn't break his stance but he did manage to calm himself down somewhat. Still, Chayote thought it was of no use. One couldn't just master something like sensing one's Ki in the middle of a battle, no matter how skilled a martial artist one was or how much innate talent they had.

Chiaotzu must have figured the same way as he extended his hands out again. He then launched himself in a mad spin, using his drilling headbutt attack for a frontal assault. The ghoulish fighter tripped over himself when he dived right through Goku's blurry afterimage and had to struggle to keep himself from fumbling outside of the ring. A thunderous crack signaled that Goku had finally landed a blow on his elusive opponent.

A black hat came flying off and landed somewhere in the audience while Chiaotzu used his flying technique to manipulate his trajectory to float up above the audience. In a whirling roll, the ghoulish one shot up and managed to regain some sense of balance in mid-air.

"Ouch!" Chiaotzu cried out as tears that seemed almost comically oversized for his head burst forth from under his eyes. There went his creepy façade.

"Heh, almost got you there…" Goku smirked.

"That was amazing! Kakarot managed to pick up sensing Ki on the fly just like that!" Chayote shook in her boots, struggling to believe something this wild. It took her so much time she considered wasted before she picked the basics of the concept up. How long was it, really? Days, weeks, certainly, maybe even a pair of months…

"No. He dodged by pure fighting instinct alone. He read his opponent." Jackie Chun disagreed with Chayote's assessment.

"Read him?" the female Saiyan wondered. "How? Did he see the future? That's even more amazing, I studied with Baba alongside Upa and I can barely see the present…"

"He did see the future…" Jackie Chun chuckled, stroking his beard. "However that future was only reserved for him and his opponent. By realizing that his opponent was his equal in terms of fighting skill, Goku managed to get into his opponent's head. He thought about what would he do in Chiaotzu's shoes, what technique he would use, how he would attack his opponent, most importantly – when would he strike?"

"I don't think I ever thought such a thing being possible…" Chayote mumbled to herself.

"That's right. Because you live in a world of superior strength, greater speed. That is the lesson the old crone wanted to teach you when she asked to attend this tournament as her student. Strength, speed and toughness are important but they are not absolute. Experience and skill sometimes also play a very important role." Jackie Chun postured.

"Beeeh!" Chiaotzu pressed his hands to his ears, bending them outward while he stuck his tongue out, teasing Goku. "You can hit as hard as you want, as long as I'm up here, you can't hit me!"

"Your hands are shorter than mine…" Goku smirked at his opponent, taking up a defensive stance and closing his eyes.

"Fool!" Chiaotzu smirked with a malicious smile as he thrust his finger out a streamlined beam of concentrated Ki flew off from his finger and hit Goku straight in the face, throwing the boy like a lifeless hunk over on his back. Judging from the disgusting cocking of Goku's head, he really felt the impact of that one.

"Of course… Reading your opponent's moves by synchronizing one's own heart with that of the enemy doesn't work if you don't know all of your opponent's moves." Jackie Chun mentioned with a solemn tone. "Goku might have gotten ahead of himself, assuming Chiaotzu would attack him the same way again."

"Nice work, Chiaotzu! Keep pressuring him! If he can even get up, that is!" Tenshinhan nodded.

"He will…" Chayote closed her eyes. With a mere pair of words and, more importantly, the confident tone in which they were delivered, she managed to psyche Tenshinhan out. "I doubt Kakarot even took that much damage from that. If he wasn't such a drama queen…"

"Damn!" Goku jumped back on his feet, shocking the entire audience. "You've ruined it! I needed some time to think…"

"You? Think?" Chayote rolled her eyes and looked away.

"Tsk. Chiaotzu's mastery over the Dodonpa dwarfs even that of Taopaipai-san, it surpasses even that of my own! Chiaotzu can fire his beams faster, he can also channel far more Ki in one beam. Stop acting like it was nothing!" Tenshinhan yelled out. Now Chayote understood a bit more about why it was so important for Tenshinhan to feel confident about the ability of a Dodonpa to bring one of the Saiyans down.

"Didn't really hurt…" Goku rubbed his forehead, feeling up a small bruise that the direct hit from the beam left. "It was way stronger than grandpa's attacks though…"

"Maybe this one didn't hurt…" Chiaotzu didn't let up his malicious smile. "But I've got plenty more to spare!"

The floating martial artist thrust his finger out and fired off another beam. Goku didn't move out of the way at all, whether it was because the beam was too fast or because he decided it wasn't worth the effort still remained a mystery. Chayote would have been disappointed if it was the first. The beams were incredibly fast though she'd have expected Goku to be able to move that fast if he was to rival her own strength as closely as she thought him to be able to.

Another thunderous crack made Goku's eyes blank out as the beam hit him straight in the chest and blasted the boy on the floor. Chiaotzu kept on making mean and funny faces alike from his position up above the crowd.

"What are you doing? Tell the announcer to start the count!" Tenshinhan scolded his friend.

"No need…" Goku stood up and dusted off his uniform. "This one hurt even less…"

"Of course it did…" Chayote smiled. "Didn't you say that Chiaotzu is capable of putting more juice in his beams? That means he'll be wearing himself out faster too…" she gave Tenshinhan a challenging look.

For all intents and purposes, this was as much a match between Chayote and Tenshinhan as it was between Goku and Chiaotzu. Each one of the second pair was as much of a pet project of the respective one from the first. Tenshinhan trained with Chiaotzu because the two were bonded over years of kinship and warmth from their time training with Tsuru Sen'nin and Chayote made sure to see Goku grow into a strong Saiyan, worthy being enrolled into Lord Frieza's army alongside her when the time came.

Though was that still the case? Did Chayote still cared about Goku's growth for the same reason? First, he was just a worthy challenger to help her own personal strength, someone whose difficulty could have been adjusted through Zenkai and who might have trained her the same way in the process. Then it was them leaving together, joining Lord Frieza's army, Chayote providing Lord Frieza with something concrete, a Saiyan for his forces like the one he asked King Vegeta for…

Why did she care now? There must have been a reason why she could no longer sit atop even the Dark Kinto. Those sorts of things… Ki control, the Kinto clouds… They all sensed the self-doubt, all the imperfections festering inside.

"If you won't be firing another beam at me, I'll come to you!" Goku pointed at Chiaotzu boldly.

"You? Come to me!? How!? You can't fly!" Chiaotzu pulled down his eyelid and stuck his tongue out while his right hand flipped Goku off.

"Ka-Me!" Goku placed his hands by his side. "Ha-Me!"

Tenshinhan crossed his arms over his chest and burst in laughter. "When the brat declared he'd be attacking Chiaotzu, I got worked up for a moment. If only I knew the worthless attack he'd pick to do so, I wouldn't have bothered worrying…"

Chayote could only wonder if what Goku had in mind was something inventive, something like Jackie Chun had described earlier, or if he was about to do something as profoundly stupid as only he could.


	44. Conclusion! The Deadly Barrage Dodonpa!

Once the Kamehameha was as finished as it would ever get, Goku continued to stare at Chiaotzu for a handful of moments. While Chayote would not put it aside that the goof had not fully thought up of what he'd do with the Kamehameha once he was done charging it, she liked to believe that was not why Goku froze like that. He felt that moment, sized his opponent up and didn't lose himself in the excitement of coming up with a plan. He was truly trying to evaluate a potential comeback, both based on what he'd already seen and also trying to realize what might have stopped him at that moment and if his opponent was even capable of such a thing.

Then he just disappeared. Together with the fully charged up Kamehameha in his hands.

"He's gone!" Chiaotzu leaned forward with a shocked expression on his pale face.

"Don't lose your cool, Chiaotzu, he's using the Afterimage Technique, keep your eyes open!" Tenshinhan yelled out at his partner but by the time Chiaotzu's slow head registered what his partner had advised him, Goku flashed up right by Chiaotzu's face with a frightening grimace filled with childish glee.

"Dodonpa!" Chiaotzu gasped out, throwing his finger out and skewering the emerging Afterimage with a beam of energy of his own, one that penetrated the blurry Afterimage and flew all the way down to where it detonated in the arena, leaving a meager crater with a few roasted tiles on the sides.

Goku's Afterimages flickered and manifested in a circle all around Chiaotzu, all of them wielding a Kamehameha in their hands, without the supernatural perception abilities of Tenshinhan or advanced experience in Ki sensing, it would have been outright impossible to tell which Goku was real.

"Amazing, his mastery of the Afterimage matches that of Korin-sama's own." Krillin's jaw dropped.

"Not to mention that Goku managed to combine the Kamehameha with the Afterimage seamlessly like that. You can truly see that he spent considerable time training with Son Gohan…" Jackie Chun observed.

"Huh? You know Son Gohan too?" Krillin looked down at Jackie Chun who just coughed and cleared his throat.

"Keep your eyes on the battle, young man!" he tried weaseling himself out of the predicament. Chayote had almost forgotten by now that Jackie Chun was Muten Roshi in disguise, she sure wasn't keeping track of who knew and who didn't know his secret at this point. She wasn't even sure why the old man went through the same charade as last time but she was sure he'd be all too excited to tell them at some point.

"Double Afterimage… No… Triple… Quad… Ruple…" Chiaotzu lowered his head and started bending fingers on his hands, trying to count the amount of Afterimages had used in order to identify the number of steps that Goku had taken the technique up to.

"Eyes on the battle, Chiaotzu!" Tenshinhan yelled out but all too late as Goku had appeared right behind Chiaotzu and threw his hands out into his face. The Kamehameha howled and blasted Chiaotzu at point-blank range, sending the poor ghoulish boy plummeting down although in a trajectory that would have made him land on the arena still.

With a chilling crunch to his landing, Chiaotzu slammed onto the ring and skid a fair distance, coming very close to falling over the edge of the ring on the other side while leaving a nasty, black skid mark over the ring.

"Hmm… I guess now I'm the one falling out of the ring…" Goku pressed his index to his cheek while he realized his folly. Before the fall could truly endanger his chances of still winning the match, Goku used his tail as a makeshift propeller to glide onto the edge of the ring before giving the audience and the announcer a peace sign with two fingers raised up.

"Simply breathtaking!" the announcer yelled out. "Contestant Goku used the Afterimage technique to baffle contestant Chiaotzu and all but guarantee a successful, point-blank Kamehameha hit!"

"Hmm… Shouldn't you be counting?" Goku wondered.

"Oh, that's right…" the announcer pulled his trousers up higher and rushed up to seemingly unconscious Chiaotzu. "One, two!" he counted.

"Three, four!" the announcer kept on going but by the four count Chiaotzu hopped up on his feet and tilted his head, cracked open in a few spots to give Goku the same creepy glare he was giving everyone else the entire time at the tournament.

"Wow, you're one seriously tough guy!" Goku shrieked out. "And you looked so puny…"

"Amazing, to think that Tsuru Sen'nin's pupils could survive a point-blank Kamehameha like that! It's almost like they've trained their entire lives to humiliate that move, it doesn't seem to work on Tenshinhan whatsoever and it can't put down Chiaotzu either…" Jackie Chun observed the fight with perhaps the most shock he'd allowed himself to show thus far.

"Don't worry, Kakarot didn't put that much force into that attack. He's still fighting with his tournament power, you know. Had he hit him full-power, he'd likely have killed the shrimp outright." Chayote tried calming him down.

"No. I cannot shrug off responsibility like that… Kamehameha might not be the marvel of martial arts I've always taken it to be. Perhaps the move can still be taken further still? That, however, is no task for old men…" Jackie Chun sighed.

"Huh? Why would you take responsibility for the Kamehameha's failings? Isn't it Muten Roshi's move?" Yamcha put his hands over his hips with some serious suspicion behind his expression.

"Ah, well… Yes… You see… With the Kamehameha, every master of the move is responsible for taking it to new heights and responsible for the move's failings. In that way, you youngsters should also take note of this experience." Jackie postured at the three.

"Not me though, I still can't pull the move off one-hundred percent of the time." Chayote raised her hand.

"That must be because your heart's not in the right place, don't worry though, I have a feeling you're getting close to becoming true to yourself." Jackie smiled at her. What did the old man know? True, he was there when Chayote failed to jump onto the Dark Kinto like she always used to, though was he implying that she couldn't because she was becoming too honest with herself and pure to do so?

"You look pretty banged up though." Goku pointed out to Chiaotzu, observing the little ghoul's tattered uniform and multiple bruises all over his body that muddled and stained the pale skin of Tenshinhan's partner murky red. "You sure you can keep this up?"

"Monkey!" Chiaotzu raised a shaky finger and pointed at Goku, trying to mirror the way he mocked the boy before but lacking the bodily integrity to stand nearly as frozen in place and motionless as before as well as lacking the peace of mind to keep up with his blank face.

"Heh, alright then," Goku smirked. "Everyone thinks you're creepy, but you're hardy and that's something I've got to respect!"

Chiaotzu just shot forward at Goku, no trickery, no telekinesis or psychokinesis. The jiangshi-boy just fired off like a missile at his opponent with a headbutt. Goku was so surprised that he could just throw his hands out and block the headbutt but not the knee strike that Chiaotzu promptly transitioned into. Upon successfully throwing his opponent off and breaking their attempts to guard themselves, Chiaotzu unleashed a flurry of quick strikes and kicks, all of them landed but Goku didn't seem all too affected by them after the series of blows ended.

"The shrimp's lacking the pissing strength to hurt Kakarot in a significant way, not to mention the length of his limbs to pack that much of a wallop." Chayote realized and voiced her thoughts out loud.

"Indeed, although Chiaotzu knows this." Jackie Chun corrected the female Saiyan. "He is no longer fighting to win, if he was, he'd try his mental trickery again, try and catch Goku with his paralysis technique or use his telekinesis to throw something at him from afar while his stamina for the Dodonpa returned. Chiaotzu has realized that he is no longer drawing the winning hand so he's just in the game to impress somebody, more importantly, to prove his own worth to himself. He's just seeing where his body will take him against a monstrous opponent, can you relate to that?"

"Sure…" Chayote pocketed her hands and smirked. "I definitely can."

Goku returned the hurt back to Chiaotzu with a diving uppercut that took the ghoulish martial artist up in the air and threw his hat off again. The force at which Chiaotzu's head cocked backwards seemed considerable enough to snap his neck outright but Goku's opponent returned to his senses and prepared himself to answer Goku's strikes to the best of his abilities.

That was a rather naïve hope for Goku didn't take long to overwhelm Chiaotzu with punches and kicks. Goku had a varied fighting style, no method of attacks, chops, kicks, acrobatics, trips, punches, slams or bites were beyond him. He implemented it all and just in the right way, finding the best method for an attack in each situation. That was the true testament of a martial artist's experience. That was perhaps the most notable gain in his training with his grandfather, not the mere boost in power level.

Having pummeled his opponent to a pulp and positioned them for a nice double ax handle slam, Goku attempted to finish Chiaotzu off that way but Chiaotzu extended his hands. Breaking Goku's composure and sending a shock of pain all throughout his body that was just enough for Chiaotzu to fly past Goku and send the Saiyan kid crashing down with a sole butt to the back of Goku's head.

"Hmm… So much for fair play…" Chayote sighed.

"No, I don't think Chiaotzu's will lingered. He is fighting to the best of his abilities, that means utilizing every move in his arsenal, even those that most fighters would consider shady at best." Jackie Chun shook his head.

"Old man… You seem to be showing a great deal of respect towards Chiaotzu." Tenshinhan noted with a sideways glance at Jackie.

"It isn't because I'm trying to suck up to you or anything. I'm just giving credit where credit is due, your friend is a remarkable young man who will grow into a fine martial artist in the future. It is absolutely mind-boggling how far you've brought yourselves all by yourselves already. No… You would have failed if you trained on your lonesome. It is exactly because you trained together that you've become as strong and skilled as you are." Jackie Chun postured.

"Chiaotzu…" Tenshinhan looked on at the arena, observing Goku peel himself off the ground while wiping the slobber off the corner of his lip and shaking his clenched fist at Chiaotzu.

"Whenever a martial artist undergoes such a grueling climb and claims such remarkable achievements, they honor the very craft of martial arts themselves and it is the responsibility of any martial artist to acknowledge that. To cherish the new heights at which their craft has been taken to. That is a bond that every martial artist shares." Jackie Chun continued and Tenshinhan's eyes began shimmering with an emotion far different from that which he usually directed at the Turtle School and Jackie Chun who chose to hang out with them.

He stared at the old man with admiration, it was of no surprise, for the old man spun a wondrous yarn of the very thing that meant the absolute most to Tenshinhan – the concept of martial arts itself, the pride but also the modesty of martial artist.

"Why you!" Goku growled and clenched his fists by his side, "Can't let my guard down around you for a second, now can I!?"

The young Saiyan charged upward with clenched fists and grit teeth. Chiaotzu extended his hands aside, the tiles together with the foundation of the ring underneath shook and trembled, Goku noted that he had not seen this position of Chiaotzu's hands before but he was too mad, too absorbed in the heat of the battle to care.

"Get ready to eat my Rock-Paper-Sci…" Goku roared out before his voice was snuffed out by two massive chunks of the fighting ring slamming from both sides, crushing him in between. Dirtied and a tad bruised, Goku fell from the rubble with a face twisted in pain Chiaotzu utilized the opening that he had created and his opponent handed to him by trying to just force his way through an unknown technique by diving down with his head pointed right at Goku.

Like a rumbling thunderbolt, Chiaotzu drove his head into Goku's gut and slammed the Saiyan into the fighting ring, sending rampant ripples alongside the still present tiles and leaving the ring in a pitiful state of ruined devastation but with sizable chunks still present and separating the area outside and still inside of the ring.

"Begin the count!" Chiaotzu wheezed out while breathing heavily on his knees. Before he could turn back to Goku, a punch dug deep into his jaw as Goku had returned to his feet before even the count of one. Following up on the rush that he felt pounding in his heart, Goku threw a focused right hand punch at the center of Chiaotzu's head but the ghoulish combatant put his hands up and blocked it, yelling out in pain as even blocking such a strike summoned mad resonances of anguish within the paled out martial artist.

"Rock!" Goku yelled out, cementing the first part of his rush attack, before putting his palm onto the dirt of the devastated ring and sweeping at Chiaotzu's legs, despite the young man not even having them planted on the ground. The curious method of attack Goku had chosen managed to send Chiaotzu spinning in mid-air and the maddened Saiyan threw a vicious palm strike right at Chiaotzu's gut, forcing the poor jiangshi to blank out for a second.

"Paper!" Goku roared out. He then launched a pair of his fingers in a thrust aimed at Chiaotzu's eyes but met only the dull resistance of rock, telekinetically flung up from underneath Chiaotzu's feet to block Goku's final strike. Despite two measly fingers usually being poor resistance compared to stone and ground dirt, Goku's strike demolished the resistance though found no paled out ghoulish martial artists hiding behind.

"Ten-san, I'm using it!" Chiaotzu barked out from high up in the air. Tenshinhan's head spun rapidly up to where the voice was coming from as from the craziness of the battle transpiring in front of him he had lost the position of his friend outright.

"Go, Chiaotzu!" Tenshinhan smiled and shook his fists in encouragement of his friend. Chiaotzu might not have been nearly as fast or as strong as Tenshinhan, nowhere close as skilled of a martial artist but there was one area in which he had managed to surpass even his superior friend – the Dodonpa.

"Barrage Dodonpa!" Chiaotzu pointed his finger down at the entire ring as well as Goku, unleashing a scattershot downpour of Dodonpa rays down onto his opponent, as well as the entire ring. The crashing destruction beams laid siege upon the eardrums of every spectator and sunk the entire scene of combat in rampant dust clouds. Debris flew off wildly in each direction forcing everyone present to cover up behind the tiny walls protecting the audience from the madness transpiring in the ring.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, what an impressive show of force! Contestant Chiaotzu had finally preserved enough stamina after taking it on the defensive for a little while for his ultimate move – the Barrage Dodonpa! I'm not yet certain, there's far too much dust and rubble but… Yes! It appears as if though the entire ring has been totaled again!" the announcer gave it all into the microphone. His yells resurrected those that considered themselves fallen in the aftermath of Chiaotzu's attack.

"No! Wait just a blasted second!" the announcer leaned his upper body forward so that the tension in his gut that held him back from expressing all of the hype he felt deep down as a fan of martial arts didn't rip his body into two. "Contestant Goku appears to have stood perfectly still in this rain of destruction and blocked everything coming his way with his body! His ring platform is perfectly safe! The only island for safety in this total devastation and contestant Goku is standing right on top of it! This insane match is still continuing!"

Once enough of the dust and rubble cleared for the rest of the audience to see what was on the stage, the rest could see Goku with his arms crossed and raised up to block the downpour of mayhem that fell on top of him. Minor bruises littered his body but it didn't look as if though Goku had taken all that much damage at all. Chayote sensed it, from all the way inside the eye of the devastating hurricane, Goku had expelled his Ki from his body in a protective bubble, just like he had seen Tenshinhan do with Yamcha's Kamehameha. He had used the Kiai without even realizing it, what an absolute monstrous prodigy…

"Heh, now it's my turn, I'll make this hit count!" Goku declared as he clenched his fist and raised it up, the boy's tail curled up until it resembled a little string and launched his up in a mad dash toward his opponent, separating the skies like a mad arrow, Goku threw his focused punch the moment he approached close enough to his worn out and failing to believe that his best shot barely achieved anything noteworthy in terms of hurting Goku opponent.

Chiaotzu's eyes whited out while his lips desperately tried clenching for air but found none. Chiaotzu had collapsed completely lifeless onto one of the dirt that his own technique had left of the fighting ring, forcing the announcer to end the match without the proper count via ringout.

"It seemed like these two would fight forever and by God, sometimes I wished they would but… The third match is over, contestant Chiaotzu is out of bounds so the winner is contestant Son Goku!" the announcer ruled pointing at Goku who was propelling himself in a controlled landing glide with his tail so that he didn't accidentally ring himself out as well after putting so much effort into his last punch.


	45. The Ground-Shaking Intermission

The audience was still in a state of unrest after the last, brutal competition. In a way, they had already reached their peak hype climax but they also looked itching for some more. It was a tricky itch, however, while they were certain to want more fighting, there were very few fighters that may have scratched that itch in a way that would have seemed fitting and satisfying, compared to Goku and Chiaotzu duking it out.

"Unfortunately… We will have to take a break until tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, the ring is completely totaled!" the announcer yelled out into his microphone. Just a moment later he lowered his hand, moving his microphone closer to his pocket while he mumbled to himself. "Just when I told contestant Goku not to wreck the ring this year…"

Chayote cracked a grin, as much as she tried to restrain it, a cackle escaped her chest, making the rest of the crew turn at her with questioning glares.

"What, you guys didn't hear it?" she wondered.

"I didn't hear anything at all…" Goku replied.

"What exactly did you hear?" Yamcha asked.

"I think that all the training with that creepy old lady in solitude left Chayote hearing all sorts of things…" Krillin leaned over at Yamcha with a malicious expression to his face. Back in the day, Chayote would have suspected an attempted insult to her pride and killed this Earthling on the spot, but by now she's come to understand the concept of casual joking around Earthlings did and how they usually didn't mean the normal implications that might have come to mind after hearing those exact words.

Krillin didn't know how close to death he might have been that time.

"Never mind," Chayote waved her hand. "It was just a joke that the announcer said."

Krillin leaned over at Yamcha again, whispering something to his pal which prompted Yamcha to chuckle. It transpired while the crew went on their way to the audience to meet up with the members of the gang that were spectating. Yamcha might have seemed in a chipper mood but the moment he noticed Bulma's death-inducing stare the poor dolt froze in place and cold sweat ran down his entire body.

Chayote and her art of fortune-telling of the present might have been the butt of the joke earlier but this time it was Chayote and Goku laughing their butts off.

* * *

"So, what did you think about the fight?" Goku wondered, pressing his fists against his cheeks as he sat on the stairs, observing Chayote doing some light sparring with the air itself. When Devil Man first presented her with this method of training, as an introduction of what was meant to be something he called image training, the Saiyan felt stupid boxing with air but with maturity of her mind and Ki control, the exercise absorbed her so much that the environment sort of filtered out while she was training.

That was why it took for her a while before she even registered the fact that Goku asked her something. Goku was likely used to being self-absorbed in one's training which was why he was so patient, usually, patience was not one of the boy's virtues.

"It was alright. You held back a fair deal. Haven't even fought with all the power you used to beat your brother." Chayote observed while continuing the stint of shadow-boxing. While she was a tiny bit taken aback by the patience Goku showed, she was shocked to see him here instead of stuffing his face full back in the hotel. Especially so after a rough fight like that.

"I don't want you or that Tenshinhan guy to see all of my strength early on." Goku smiled and rubbed his nose with his index finger.

"Oh, I thought you wanted that pale runt to nearly kill you so that you could power up some more on me." Chayote grit her teeth and delivered a complex combination of kicks in the air without using her flying technique.

"Say, say, you can fly, can't you? Without Kinto, I mean. Can you show me?" Goku wondered. So that was what it was all about…

"Yeah, I guess I can give it a few shots. Though don't think I'm doing it for you. Tenshinhan is almost a master of this technique so I can use some training with it, you just happen to be nearby when I'm honing it, got it?" Chayote pouted her face and concentrated on her Ki flow. She didn't like still having to take an active effort in levitating. When Chiaotzu used it back during the match it seemed almost effortless and Tenshinhan appeared to be roaming height almost as effortlessly as he was walking.

"Right!" Goku nodded. He was still Chayote's rival so if she followed the Earthling obsession of postponing the best part until the last, she'd have likely not let him see her practicing her flying, still, since she subscribed to the Saiyan policy of overwhelming the enemy before the fight even began, she wanted the competition to see how far she was from their level exactly.

Then again, Chayote had been getting an irritating thought sparking in her mind that Goku might not have been that far off. She still hadn't seen the full depths of the power-up he obtained fighting Raditz after the Divine Dragon returned him his stamina back during Baba's trials.

"Wha!" Goku cried out when something he couldn't see threw him forward and off the handful of stairs leading up to the hotel entrance. The young Saiyan very nearly planted his face onto the pavement but managed to shoot his arms out and attempt a flip. Due to the fact that the ground wasn't staying still, Goku lost his balance and had to fumble and roll back on his feet. Chayote observed the boy's curious antics with a hint of curiosity from above.

"What are you doing?" she asked before noticing that birds took off and the people around began losing their footing as well, cars swerved around as they passed in a short radius around the hotel, whatever was going on here wasn't just Goku messing around.

"I… Something's wrong with the ground!" Goku cried out and took a fighting stance, prepared to fight the ground beneath his feet itself. "It… Won't stay still!" he grumbled while the ground threw him around. It was only due to unnatural skill in keeping his balance that most martial artists possessed that Goku kept his cool.

"What was that!?" Yamcha yelled out from behind Chayote. She was surprised to see him and Krillin not inside the hotel, slacking off and watching television with Bulma and the others. Master Korin must have beat the Earthling penchant for slacking off right out of those two. Maybe Chayote should be a little bit wary of Krillin's performance tomorrow after all?

"You weren't at the hotel?" Chayote wondered. She closed her eyes and focused her awareness on her surroundings. "Whatever's doing this, it's the most powerful in the hotel."

"Bulma and the rest are inside! We have to go investigate!" Yamcha clenched his fist in front of his chest and took off.

"Hang on, cowboy, you don't even know where you're running, Chayote's the one with fortune-telling abilities, remember?" Krillin ran after his friend yelling from the top of his lungs.

"Kinto!" Goku cried out, making the golden cloud whistle on down from the sky and position itself up above the quaking ground. Jumping off the ground appeared to cause Goku some trouble but once he landed both his feet firmly atop the Kinto cloud his weird posturing trying to keep the balance ceased.

"It's coming from that room over there," Chayote pointed at a room where the concentration of Ki was the most powerful. It seemed like everything around it was just mere shockwaves caused by the eruption of the Ki located inside that room. Goku followed Chayote on his magical cloud until the pair reached the window.

"Yamcha and Krillin are on the other side of this room as well. They must have headed toward the strength of the quakes," Chayote observed while Goku flew up closer to take a peek inside. When he leaned in and rubbed his hand over the glass, the Saiyan boy stumbled back and cried out in discomfort.

"It's glowing too bright!" he complained. The fact that the Ki from the source was so prominent it could have been seen even by someone without the ability to sense Ki made the source of this eruption a remarkable curiosity to Chayote. Whoever that was, they have surpassed the level of an average Earthling fighter by a mile. Someone like that would have been capable of immense destructive power. Perhaps powerful enough to even become a low-ranking Frieza soldier?

Chayote closed her eyes, trying to extend her perception to see into the present. That which was transpiring inside that chaotic room. Yamcha and Krillin were knocking on the door of the room but upon becoming too vexed by no response combined with intensifying quakes, the pair kicked the door down. A pale figure floated out of the room, his lips were waving and twitching in fear. The little shrimp would have been completely pale in a state of panic had it not been his natural complexion the whole time.

"T-Ten-san! His p-power is…" he kept babbling and pointing inside the room. Yamcha and Krillin covered up their faces. They both heard what the little jiangshi boy had told them but neither one of them said anything out loud, as if they were afraid to admit that the man spreading this awe-inspiring power was actually a potential opponent in the competition for one, the man that defeated them without bringing out this amazing power for the other.

"D-Did you say that was Tenshinhan!?" Yamcha babbled out before forcing his body to overcome the natural flight response and pushing through the tremendous push back that was threatening to fold the room and push it all apart in a spherical mark of devastation.

"That's right… Ten-san sat down to meditate. That's what he uses to… Suppress his power…" Chiaotzu explained.

"I guess he decided to let it out, no use holding it back anymore with the tournament advancing to the later stages…" Krillin grunted, trying to follow Yamcha indoors. Chiaotzu, despite being equal, if not superior, to the two Turtle School students, stayed out and continued to tremble. His reaction seemed the most important to Chayote for it was the shrimp that had seen his friend's power before and not Krillin and Yamcha. This was turning out to be quite entertaining…

"Hey, asshole, snap out of it!" Yamcha yelled out. "You're gonna tear the building down!"

The rampaging shockwaves of Ki ceased all at once, the rising rubble fell to the ground while Tenshinhan's eyes shot wide open, something was wrong, however, they were cotton-white. The self-honed martial artist exploded with a flurry of thrusts at Yamcha, overwhelming the other contestant. Had Yamcha not dashed back out of instinct to avoid the rapid thrust of his strikes, Tenshinhan might have downed the perceived enemy then and there.

Krillin dashed in and collided with Tenshinhan, the three-eyed martial artist pushed the younger baldy back and delivered a stiff-looking kick that was aimed for the front of Krillin's head. A hit like that might have snapped Krillin's neck had he been any lesser martial artist. Every single strike was an execution to even a master martial artist in this state. After nearly killing both of the Turtle School martial artists, sense returned to Tenshinhan's eyes. His eyes sparked with rage initially but after seeing his surroundings and the destruction he had caused, they became tamer.

Tenshinhan even bowed in front of the two.

"I apologize. It has been a while since I powered up to my very limit. I was not aware of the full extent of my own abilities or the effect that unleashing them might have caused. Perhaps now you will better understand why I keep them locked away and controlled through meditation?" Tenshinhan closed his eyes in embarrassment with a humbled expression. Feats of destruction like this weren't anything a proper martial arts master took pride in.

On the contrary, if there was one thing that all master Chayote studied under taught her, it was that control deserved far more pride in one's own abilities and praise from one's superiors. It exemplified proper mastery over martial arts and strength itself.

By the time Chayote had opened her eyes and returned to her immediate surroundings, Goku had already opened the window from outside and made his way inside. The fact that he didn't punch his way through the wall suggested astounding restraint which deserved some more cred in of itself. Perhaps training with his grandfather helped his manners somewhat as, if what the image Chayote had built of the boy judging from what she knew of his early years was to be believed, he might have been the sole source of education for that sort of thing to Goku.

Seeing how everyone had made their way inside, Chayote saw no business floating outside and staring like a creep. While Tenshinhan's displayed strength was fearsome, it gave Chayote little to fear for it was very much untamed. These heights were new to Tenshinhan himself, it seemed.

"So you two have come too…" Tenshinhan remarked with a more annoyed facial expression.

"It seemed that Yamcha and Krillin got into a fight, I wanted some of it too!" Goku pointed out.

"Oh, I'll give you more fight than you can handle, brat." Tenshinhan grit his teeth. "This power that made the earth shake, I'll use all of it to destroy you two."

"Watch it so you don't sprain something with that wide of a reach." Chayote rolled her eyes. "Anyway, the crisis is averted, there's no use in sticking around here any longer."

"Y-Yeah…" Yamcha nodded with sweat still running down his forehead and down his back as well. Everyone but Tenshinhan left the room, Chiaotzu floated back in, now that Tenshinhan had settled down with the external destruction oozing out of him and kept it to the usual inner boiling he experienced all the time.

For the first few steps, the crew walked quietly. Yamcha was the first to end that silence.

"I… I couldn't see him move when he opened his eyes. If I had been any closer…" he expressed with frustration. He may have only realized the world of power still hidden from him ever after all the training he went through. Before he might have thought to be a proper challenge to Tenshinhan, by extension to Goku and Chayote who were looking at this curious, three-eyed martial artist with concern but now he saw that he was only a challenge to a certain level of Tenshinhan's power. That which was reserved for his own weight category.

"His power is crazy for an Earthling." Chayote admitted. "Though I'm more impressed with Baba. The Old Crone knew the hidden talent that this guy possessed and hyped him up for me before she even prompted him to start training. This sort of entertainment is what keeps me bound to this dirty little planet."

"Y-You're not really that strong, are you, Chayote?" Krillin poked his fingers one against the other, having just seen a taste of the level he'd have to compete on tomorrow that nearly left him headless with just a mere kick.

"If it were a contest of mere power, even Kakarot from three years ago could have easily dispatched of this Tenshinhan. What bothers me that it is rarely just a contest of power." Chayote shrugged. "Seeing the future isn't something I'm showing much talent for, I'm just dealing with having to see the present at the moment so that's what I'll be more interested in."

"Whaa! I was so scared!" Bulma cried out and charged at Yamcha the moment that the gang entered the hotel room together. She may not have aimed for him specifically, but whether it was irony or some subconscious desire to tackle Yamcha specifically, he was the one that took the brunt of her run-in.

The poor dolt blushed and wrapped his arms around the blue-haired inventor. Bulma's eyes fluttered for a moment, she seemed like she was about to erupt and start throwing mad punches and kicks in every direction but something inside her made her just rub her face more into Yamcha's chest, ceasing the charade she's been putting up since she first saw him after the three years of training.

Chayote pocketed her hands. "I hope you left some food." She grumbled.

"Food!" Goku threw his fist up, nearly punching the hole through the ceiling as he rushed after Chayote to the kitchen.

"Say, is it really okay to let those two eat everything? They'll bankrupt us, all the food's extra, you know." Krillin rubbed the back of his head.

"Eh? Whatever…" Bulma waved her hand and kept on rubbing herself at Yamcha. "I'll pay for it, as long as they sit quietly and don't cause any trouble, it'll be worth it."

"I thought Chayote went mad and decided to take over the world…" Oolong butted his fingers with a healthy blush to his cheeks and a silly smile. "I couldn't have been the only one thinking that with how often she talks about conquering Earth…"

"No, it was that Tenshinhan guy…" Yamcha's face shifted from harmless melancholy of having Bulma snuggle with him and rub her face in his chest to the usual displeasure that the topic of Tenshinhan brought to his face. "Turns out he's so crazy powerful that he can't control himself. Explains why he beat me, I guess…"

"Wow, Yamcha-sama took on someone that powerful and almost won! Amazing!" Puar floated circles around Yamcha and Bulma.

* * *

"Surprised to see you awake at this hour. Figured you'd want to sleep before tomorrow's fights." Yamcha said with an excited tone. Krillin looked back at his training partner, being caught by surprise in the middle of some light stretching before a good jog around the island.

"Can't sleep. Can you blame me? Chayote's one of the monstrous guys in there…" Krillin gulped and stretched his neck and his head some with widely open eyes and a twitching lower lip.

"Hey, don't sweat about it, I've faced that Tenshinhan guy and I did just fine. Just try to do your best and enjoy yourself. That's what the training we did with Korin-san was all about, right?" Yamcha encouraged his friend while taking a position to do some light jogging himself.

"Heh, I'm kind of glad we met Goku and Chayote. Those two can teach us so much about how to look at fighting." Krillin managed to swallow the unhealthy slugs creeping up his throat and soothe the butterflies swarming down in his belly and prepared for some late-night training.

The two took off just like they used to when they were running dozens of thousands of laps around the Kame Island of throughout the endless wilderness of the west during their training on their lonesome. Side by side with smiles like upside crescents and ambitions reaching the sky. The next morning when the tournament would resume was just about to dawn.


	46. The Tunneling Kamehameha!

"Ladies and gentlemen, the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament will now continue!" the announcer declared with his arm reaching for the sky and inspiring exclamations of joy from the gathered audience. These people didn't appear to need any warm-up matches to get them into the mood of seeing some action in the ring.

"We've got a crazy match cued up. It's between two experienced contestants of the tournament who participated last year! Krillin of the Turtle School and Chayote, the champion of the last tournament!"

Chayote had never even considered being revered on this planet for martial arts knowledge or strength before she heard the cheering in the audience. Clearly, the name of being a champion of the World Martial Arts Tournament meant something here. How naïve these people were, they considered Chayote the champion in martial arts amongst the rest when in fact she was a mere initiate at this point. She's studied with some of the best masters present on this planet but she still lacked experience, patience and… Compared to Goku, even talent.

"Chayote," Krillin turned to the Saiyan, breaking her out of her contemplations. "I have a request."

"You want me to hold back so that we can have an even fight? I think I can modify my power level to match yours somewhat, I did intend to do that anyway." Chayote replied.

"No, the opposite, actually. I want to ask you to not hold back at all and come at me with your real strength." Krillin bent his fists to his chest. He looked rather passionate about this.

"Won't you shit your pants?" Chayote rolled her eyes.

"Maybe…" Krillin made a stupid smirk and rubbed the back of his bald head. "But when I saw Yamcha fight Tenshinhan and think he lost to his opponent in a fair and even match, then, fight Tenshinhan's real power… When I saw the disappointment in Yamcha's face… I never want to feel that way. If I get trounced out there, that's just fine by me, I just want to know where my training really got me."

Chayote contemplated that for a brief moment as the two slowly walked out onto the ring, parallel to each other and stared at the audience that encouraged them to do their best. The Saiyan noticed the audience cheering way harder for Krillin. It made sense, she was nothing if not rude to them and the other contestants three years ago and nobody wanted to see somebody win two or three times in a row. The audience wanted intrigue alongside their bloody entertainment, a different planet, similar trends.

"Yeah, I'll do that, Krillin." Chayote spoke up loud enough for Krillin to hear. "I think you're strong enough to survive it."

"I'm glad you think so." Krillin took the usual Turtle School fighting pose that he mirrored from seeing Muten Roshi, Goku and Jackie Chun use though Krillin's stance was modified. He wound up his left leg farther back. Chayote was certain it meant something but she lacked experience still to read stances that well. She figured that it was best if she stuck that note on the Krillin's nervousness board and was done with it.

"Begin!" the announcer yelled out while the gong tolled on the other side of the ring. Almost immediately Krillin charged at Chayote with a flurry of strikes. His arms were rather short and lacked significant reach, his speed was impressive for an Earthling but his moves appeared almost sluggish to Chayote's serious perception. Not a single hit even contacted a block, Chayote was almost lazy in her dodges though flashes of her training did begin to surface.

* * *

Devil Man swiped a handful of times, Chayote leaned to the sides and under his strikes and leaped up to avoid a tail sweep. Another flurry of thrusts followed by a low-aimed leg thrust which Chayote jumped over as well. When her feet landed onto the tongues of the statues of the Devil's Toilet, however, she found a chilling sense of weightlessness drive the stake of fear into her heart while her body mustered up for her levitation ability.

"You're strong and fast beyond compare. Stronger than even most demons I know. Still, even you need to mind your surroundings. Earthlings are a cowardly lot when they are charging you, it's usually because they're confident they can win. Surroundings play a large part in most Earthling planning, especially in the World Martial Arts Tournament or the Devil's Toilet!" Devil Man crossed his arms over his chest, nailing another lesson down to Chayote's thick head.

* * *

Chayote glanced back while putting up a wider and more generalized block to avoid potential strikes Krillin might attempt to utilize his distraction with. She tensed up her calves to stonewall any potential leg sweeps even though Krillin lacked the length in legs to utilize such a balance-robbing move effectively. There it was – the edge of the ring. Chayote was quick and agile but her evasion cost her space which all narrowed it down to her approaching the edge faster. Did Krillin truly count on ringing Chayote out?

The Saiyan slipped in a body blow in the seemingly ceaseless offensive of Krillin's but before she could complete the counterattack, something sharp gouged at her eyes. It wasn't Krillin's fists or even his fingers, not even pebbles or pieces of dirt irritating them but… It was a blasting ray of light. The gleaming rays of Sun reflected off of Krillin's head and blinding Chayote for a blink.

A handful of dull thuds resonated through the Saiyan's body before a more powerful smack across the side of her cheek. Chayote felt discomfort from those strikes but they didn't make her do much more than just stagger back a fair bit.

"Tsk, give me a break!" Krillin grunted in irritation that Chayote didn't trip and fall over and, possibly, out of the ring. Chayote heard taps of his boots nearby and then all the way across on the other side of the ring. Krillin had dashed back to the edge of the ring himself and prepared for a crushing, full-ring flying kick to Chayote's jaw which he felt certain would kick her out.

The boot was far away, closer, closer… Just inch from where Chayote could have smelled the sweat off of Krillin's white socks, his boot pierced through the air. Krillin realized that he was floating over certain ring out so he thrust his hands out and blasted a quick and puny Kamehameha that came out as a measly pulse of energy, just enough to stop his wild momentum and throw him back into the ring. Just as Krillin's feet touched the eastern area of the ring, a sense-robbing knee to the chest knocked him down and out cold.

Chayote opened her eyes. They still felt watery and irritated but Krillin had overestimated how much she would require to rely on her eyes. The announcer with a sweat-covered face and stiff jaw crept up to Chayote from behind.

"Sh-Shall I begin the count!?" he asked.

"No need. I don't think this would do him in. After having to wait this long, I want to have a bit more fun yet." Chayote denied the announcer's request.

Krillin hopped back onto his feet, his tongue sticking out and clenching his chest, wheezing for air as if every breath caused him torment. He did receive a fair and stiff hit to the center of the ribs. Any weakling or even a person considered legendary by Earthling standards would have had their chest cavity caved in and their ribs shattered to dust from such a hit. Krillin really did ace Korin's training, it seemed.

"Come on, Krillin, you knew I could sense Ki, didn't you? Also, something you refused to learn is that just like psychics like Baba can see the future, I can see the present, meaning you won't sneak up on me with dirty tricks like that." Chayote postured at the recovering martial artist.

"Heh, heh… After Jackie Chun used my head as the moon, I thought I had a wild idea…" Krillin chuckled to himself before breaking up into a fit of coughing.

"It was a nice redirection, making me think you will ring me out before pulling your trick off," Chayote admitted, "That's the only reason why you landed the few hits you did land."

"D-Did you just commend me? Feels kind of weird…" Krillin dyed his face with a malicious smirk before taking a fighting pose again.

"I do feel bad about this but you did ask me to attack you seriously," Chayote clenched her fists by her hips and took a fighting pose of her own.

"T-That pose!" she could hear Tenshinhan's outraged voice from the sidelines and he had all the reason to be furious – she did kind of borrow his fighting pose without the intention of ever returning him, which on Earth was also widely known as stealing something.

Krillin tried his best to prepare himself for what was to come. Chayote straight out faded out from his vision she appeared right up in Krillin's face with an elbow shot to the face, mirroring the manner in which Tenshinhan attacked Yamcha, though repositioning the elbow strike to the solar plexus and aiming it at Krillin's face instead. Krillin's image rippled, revealing the Afterimage trick that he had used to try and give Chayote the slip.

Like a frightened mare, Chayote floated her lower body upward with a double kick behind her, a strange manner of kicking an opponent who stood right behind one which would not have been possible with the aid of the flying technique. This time Chayote was stealing from all over the place as she had stolen this particular backward kick from both the kangaroos she'd seen during her journey around the Earth before the last World Martial Arts Tournament and Raditz.

Krillin cried out in pain as Chayote's feet drove into the bottom of his chin and sent him flying up high. This manner of kicking was not optimal as it did not employ any balance, meaning the kicking force was greatly diminished but Chayote's plan was not to knock Krillin out with a mere backward-aimed kick. Chayote's body faded out and flickered up into the sky, after her opponent.

"Incredible! Absolutely unbelievable! Contestant Chayote moves so fast that she is totally invisible unless she's standing still!" the announcer roared into his microphone without losing his voice.

Krillin grunted in pain, his consciousness was returning to him from the howling wind caressing his cheeks up high. Below him, he could see white, cotton-like clouds, something that tipped him off that he was in less than a favorable position but he couldn't help it when every strike he skipped made him black out for a moment.

"N-Now where did she go?" he mumbled to himself.

"Pinto Spear!" Chayote's battle cry from up above would have alerted Krillin to his opponent's position had Chayote not tackled him in the back with a downward shoulder charge and fallen to the ground like a crashing meteor together with her opponent. The announcer covered up his face while the audience cowered behind their protective barriers that have never served their use so often as they did during the last couple of tournaments.

"A-Amazing! Contestant Chayote had tackled Krillin from above the clouds, crashing together with him back down! I can already see the massive crater and the tiles of the entire ring are cracked! Let's just hope that we will not require another break to replace the ring!" the announcer recounted what had just transpired in front of the audience which, while seeming pointless, couldn't have been more useful when most of the audience couldn't even register anything but blurs and signs of the devastation that followed.

"Is he out of the ring?" Chayote emerged from underground with dirt and pebbles from the crashed tiles all over her cloak and hair.

"Ummm… Well…" the announcer looked down at the abyssal two-meter wide crater left right in the center of the ring and the ripples all over the ring around it. "Unless I can confirm Contestant Krillin touched the ground down below and you didn't, I cannot say for certain… Technically he is still within the confines of the ring right now."

"Good. Will you start the count then? I don't believe Krillin should still be conscious." Chayote gave the announcer a chilling stare.

"Y-Yes, that seems reasonable! One…!" the announcer began counting. Before he could count to three, Krillin burst forth from underground, riding a Kamehameha wave.

"I'm not out of the ring yet!" he cried out in desperation. Due to the busted up body holding him back, Krillin failed to complete his elegant flip and instead landed on his back onto the cracked and busted area of the ring. Little by little, he scurried back on his feet and, despite standing in a somewhat unstable way, still staggering from time to time, he was on his feet.

"Contestant Krillin, it was too dark to see if you touched the ground below, could you tell us what had happened? Also, keep in mind that Contestant Chayote is here to help us find out the truth, in case you try to lie about touching the ground and she's declared to possess some sort of psychic powers." The announcer approached Krillin and pointed the microphone up in his face.

Krillin, with a lump on one eye that threatened to close the swelling eye up until it was given time to heal, a tattered Turtle School gi that was torn in a way that left it only covering half his body and covered with cuts and bruises just hyperventilated for a couple of seconds while he struggled against the attraction of the ground underneath his feet attempting to claim him.

"I used my Afterimage to try and blindside Chayote, I guess she was right about psychic powers because somehow she managed to kick me up into the air. She then raced so far high up above that she could tackle and crash with me down into the ground, completing her insane pursuit technique." Krillin explained it to the baffled audience.

"Spectacular, and how did you avoid a ring out?" the announcer asked.

"There was no way for me to do so. Chayote tackled me down so fast and hit me with such velocity and brutality that… I blacked out for a second. It wasn't until the pain of crashing down woke me up, I formed a Kamehameha in my hands to cushion my crash through the dirt. It was because the Kamehameha provided both a pillow of opposing force as well as a push back that I never touched the dirt underneath the ring, I merely touched my own blast."

"You've become quite skilled with the Kamehameha…" Chayote observed. "You're using one far faster than Goku or Yamcha do. I don't think I've ever seen even the old man use it quite as fast."

"Heh, well… Yeah, I did practice with the Kamehameha a fair bit." Krillin scratched his nose with his index.

"Very well, I don't see why we cannot continue this match!" the announcer gestured for the pair standing on the opposite sides of the crater at the center of the ring to continue fighting.

"I don't see any other options…" Krillin warmed up and tested the flexibility of his muscles by cracking his knuckles, bending his knees a few times and twisting his neck around as far as it went. "I'm going to have to go for broke here."

"If you had an option to defeat me, I'm disappointed you didn't take it from the beginning. You aren't a Saiyan, your body doesn't grow stronger from further punishment." Chayote scolded her opponent, feeling skeptical about Krillin's declaration though retaining some semblance of wary in her actions since Krillin has shown himself to be a resourceful combatant so far.

"Alright, here goes!" Krillin crossed his arms and his image began blurring out. Copies of the pint-sized warrior just as translucent as the blurry original began appearing all over the ring, this went far beyond the use of the Afterimage that Chayote had seen, this degree of mastery over the technique matched if not transcended that of Korin himself.

"Hmph…" Chayote closed her eyes and crossed her own arms. Krillin's Afterimages all froze in place instead of shuffling all over the arena trying to confuse her. For a moment there they must have thought that Chayote would repeat the technique he had used and struggled with believing that was possible. However, instead of copies of Chayote, a bubble of Ki formed around her, visible enough to where not even those without the ability to sense Ki could see it.

Chayote grunted while extending her arms out to the sides. The bubble erupted in rapid expansion, colliding with the Afterimages and dispelling them all at once and overwhelming the original Krillin as well. The floating Earthling avoided a ring out by breathing loads of air in and expanding his body, stopping his momentum to fly outward all at once. Once he landed on his feet, Krillin clutched his ribs and leaned really close to the ground.

"Dammit…" he cursed. "I was so close…"

"Close, close to what?" Chayote bent her head to the side like a curious puppy.

"If I tell you, I'll never be close to that again…" Krillin smirked.

"In your state, I doubt you ever will either way." Chayote shrugged.

"Well, I don't think I've got it in me for another beatdown so… Only one thing left to do now." Krillin put his hands together and moved them to his hips by his side. "Ka-Me-Ha-Me…"

It was difficult to understand just what the bald warrior was trying to achieve by firing a Kamehameha with all of his remaining strength now. He likely still had considerable strength left, just not a body to utilize it effectively so on paper this might have seen as his only viable fight plan but… Chayote couldn't help but feel like it was just pointless, as powerful as his Kamehameha would have been – it would not have achieved anything of note. And it wasn't like his blast had that much Ki packed into it, Chayote sensed ample reserves that Krillin was still keeping in reserves, even when going all out he wasn't willing to gamble it all.

"Ha!" Krillin extended his hands out at Chayote, making the thigh of the female Saiyan twitch but the blast didn't fire at her, instead, it stayed in Krillin's hands that then moved down below. The ring rumbled and cracked from the concentrated pressure and the ground underneath the feet of both contestants shook enough to warrant concern over the ring's well-being.

The Kamehameha burst forth from underneath Chayote, sinking her in an upward rising pillar of Ki as the somewhat weakened from its travel underneath the ring Kamehameha consumed the opponent it meant to defeat. Once the blast weakened and died out, Chayote stood there in a state of unease, as if she had just been frightened by a jumpscare but nothing of note came out of it, just as she had intended the direct hit from the Kamehameha to do.

"You know, even if you blasted me directly, I wouldn't have tried to dodge it. There are spectators behind me, you know…" Chayote tried to reason with Krillin to surrender already but there was nobody there where the pint-sized martial artist was before firing his underground Kamehameha at Chayote.

The Saiyan took a couple of steps forward, trying to get a better look at the ring and all of its devastated ridges and craters. There was nothing in the ring. That Kamehameha, Chayote didn't even sense where Krillin had gone when the blast covered her, it served almost like a smokescreen for her Ki Sense. The female Saiyan closed her eyes, trying to see into the present and where Krillin was right now. The moment her eyes closed, she realized it but all too late, before she could even tap into her visions of the present.

"Gotcha!" Krillin yelled out, grabbing Chayote's tail from behind her, coming out from the hole that his own Kamehameha had created. His final gamble was executed to perfection, all but one tiny detail. Krillin's feet dangled in the air once Chayote's tail had tilted his entire body off the ground, spun it around and flung it out of the ring. The young Earthling yelled out in pain once his back slammed against the protective wall behind which the spectators lined up and dropped his behind softly onto the grass out of the ring.

"Did you really think I wouldn't train my tail in between the tournaments?" Chayote turned to Krillin.

"I had a feeling you would have but… I had no other choice but to gamble my victory on that," Krillin smiled while stroking his busted up and dirty head.

"Ring out! Contestant Krillin has been eliminated, meaning Contestant Chayote moves on to the semi-finals!" the announcer declared the end to the match.


	47. Enigma of Generation Previous

"You'll have to excuse us while the World Martial Arts Tournament takes a two-hour break to repair the ring!" the announcer declared and abandoned the remains of the ring promptly so that he was not the one who had the face wrath of the audience that had just gathered to see some matches and had to now sit through another break just so the ring could get patched up.

"It won't be anywhere near enough but… We hope to make it at the very least serviceable by the time you two go at it," the announcer wiped the sweat off his face while he entered the contestant area and addressed Jackie Chun and Tenshinhan.

"Don't be too embarrassed over this, I've waited for hundreds of years for a challenge of my life and I can wait a few more hours." Jackie Chun smiled with a pacifying palm gesture before placing his arms behind his back and strolling off to wait his two hours through.

"Say, say… How long is two hours?" Goku turned to Chayote who had just returned after the fight.

"About as long as it takes for you to finish eating." Chayote replied, fully knowing that Goku would take it the wrong way and not get the hint that he eats too much and too slow.

"Oh… So then we can go eat something!" Goku jumped up and ran to the announcer, hopping on his feet like an impatient monkey while he waggled his tail about and drool ran down his mouth, getting in the way of the boy's articulation. "Hey, can you make us something to eat?"

"Didn't you have something to eat in the hotel you're staying in?" the announcer wiped his sweaty temple with a hanky before turning to a pair of anthropomorphic dog monks and issuing them a request to make some food. Given how the monks knew who they were dealing with, they found them some more monks and scurried off to make something edible happen.

"Yeah! Are you gonna eat too?" Goku turned to Chayote who just shrugged.

"Sure, I could eat."

"What about you, Krillin?" Goku leaned over to greet his friend who had just made his broken path into the contestants' area.

"I… I think I might need some medical help… How can you even think of eating right now?" Krillin looked up to Chayote, wondering if any of his efforts even left a dent on the Saiyan.

"It's because you gave me your best shot that I need to replenish my strength…" Chayote smiled and gave Krillin a thumb-up. She had picked up during her time on Earth that sometimes Earthlings lied to make those they cared about feel better. She had known this for pretty much years at this point but she never really cared enough to use that experience up until now.

"Yamcha… Can you show me where you got checked up?" Krillin looked up. Yamcha tapped his foot on the wooden floor impatiently. The poor dolt squirmed and sweated like he wasn't too comfortable in his own skin. "Don't tell me you've got a thing going on with Bulma?" Krillin realized.

"Well… We've been away from each other for three whole years so…" Yamcha tried to salvage some of his reputation still but Chayote put her hands up to her face.

"Dark Kinto!" she called out, waiting for the black cloud to blitz up in front of her and wait around like it's always used to. "Sit down." She ordered Krillin.

"Wha… Wait… Are you sure?" Krillin took a few steps back, stumbling on his right leg when his knee gave way to pain and wear.

"I can't use the damned thing anyway and all the whining you're doing is pretty damned pathetic. If we are to be seen around one another, you better not embarrass me like you're doing now." Chayote crossed her arms over her chest and smirked while she acted all smug and mighty.

Krillin blinked a few times before reaching out for the cloud and climbing over. The pint-sized fighter grabbed hold on the cloud like it was soft and cushiony cotton and pulled himself up on the cloud. With his arms and legs spread out on top, Krillin examined the ground underneath his feet that was just half his size away from him.

It only took the baldy one command for the cloud to blast off to the Papaya Island mainland and the small but sophisticated towns located there. Goku turned to Chayote with glittering eyes and a smiling jaw that just didn't seem to be ready to shut anytime soon.

"Hey, Korin pulled Kinto from a whole cluster of clouds. You might not be able to use the Dark Kinto anymore but maybe the regular Kinto will work?" Goku wondered.

"Forget it, I've learned to levitate. It's not as fast yet but I'll get there." Chayote shrugged while she looked at a black shimmer in the sky where her companion that seemed to be with her for most of her stay on Earth was now serving someone who could have used it.

"Hmm… That Jackie Chun guy…" Tenshinhan mumbled to himself. He tried to focus and close his eyes, meditate for a moment but his eyes kept opening up and catching up to the old man who tried to buy young woman ice cream in the market but kept having it splattered all over his clothes or the ground due to poor gifting manners that involved far too much groping for any chance of success.

"Is something wrong, Ten-san?" Chiaotzu looked up at Tenshinhan with a deadpan glare.

"He's not like the other fighters. He doesn't brag and he doesn't seem to be taking fighting all that seriously. Almost like he had absolutely nothing riding on this at all!" Tenshinhan clenched his fist, tensing up his well-honed body as a vein shot out by his temple. "I'm not sure if I should be intimidated by a man who's this confident of his abilities or destroy him with all my power for the mockery he's committing to martial arts…"

"Hmmm…" Chiaotzu hummed out, turning to the unfortunate old man while he tended to his pummeled face by pulling out a bag of ice from a nearby ice cream vendor and placing it all over the sores on his face.

"You!" Tenshinhan extended his arm out to stop the announcer as he was passing by. "What is known about this Jackie Chun guy? He's participated in the past, hasn't he?"

"Ummm… Well… I don't remember him too well per se…" the announcer shuffled through the pile of papers he carried around, containing the names of the competitors, their history in the World Martial Arts Tournament and accomplishments. "I'm more familiar with Chun-san because of the company he hangs around with. Frankly, I'm not even sure how they know each other, they just seem to have befriended each other… All monsters by their own right."

"I've seen him handle that Man-Wolf with incredible skill. He didn't have a chance to show it all because of how pathetic his opponent was but it was clear he still had ample of it to spare. Surely he must have climbed quite high last time?" Tenshinhan wondered.

"Oh… Well… It says here he didn't make it to the finals. He has been eliminated in the preliminaries." The announcer pointed at Jackie Chun's sheet.

"What!?" Tenshinhan grabbed the sheet out of the announcer's grasp and ran his three-eyes through the sheet a multitude of times. "This… This is impossible, I've faced that Nam guy from the finals of the 21st tournament during the preliminaries and he was an utter disgrace! How could this old geezer have…"

"Maybe he faced someone really tough?" Chiaotzu wondered.

"Who knows… He is an unorthodox opponent to be sure. With the rest, I know what I'll be facing but with this joker…" Tenshinhan squeezed the sheet of paper in his hand before throwing it away, making the announcer quite frustrated since he will have to both put all of his papers down to pick Jackie's up and also unfold it to make it look somewhat presentable now that Tenshinhan had messed it up.

"And so we're back, ladies and gentlemen in the audience, after our brief break. Back and ready to resume the spectacular climb up to the heavens of martial arts competition as we intend to find out the true, one and only strongest guy or gal in the heavens!" the announcer yelled out like a rock musician, hyping the frustrated audience back up. All the waiting for what they came here to see had scratched its mark into the spectators but it wasn't like the island lacked anything to kill time doing.

"Whoo! I'm stuffed!" Goku shrieked out in pure glee as he smacked his bloated belly, still decorated with spice and grease of chicken he had just finished on his cheeks and over his mouth. "Now just to see some good fighting!" he turned serious and excited in a snap.

"Good fighting? You've never seen the old man fight, did you? I was the one who forced him to give up last time, he just kind of hung around, did you forget?" Chayote teased Goku, she might have known about Jackie Chun's secret identity but given how he wanted it to remain hidden and he's taught Chayote something valuable every time he spoke up, she continued honoring his wish.

"Nah, he's really good, I can tell!" Goku smirked.

"He has to be, if he's to take on Tenshinhan…" Chayote agreed. She couldn't help but share Goku's excitement. After all, ever since Mr. Popo kicked her down the Korin Tower, all she's heard were praises of Muten Roshi's unparalleled skill and power. He may not have been the absolute strongest Earthling as there were too many rogue elements involved in that title, but he was the default face on the cover of the book that investigated the case.

And here Muten Roshi, someone Chayote has heard legends and descriptions singing his praise about but has never seen fighting, would face the greatest prodigy of martial arts on the entire Earth, if Baba's words meant to keep Chayote on Earth were to be believed. It was true that Tenshinhan had taken the power scale of an Earthling far beyond where Chayote would have imagined it, still, he was facing off against a living legend…

Too early, too difficult to tell for certain!

"On the western side of the ring we have Tenshinhan, the self-hardened martial arts prodigy who has surpassed the teachings of his martial arts school and his master, a legend in his own right, the Tsuru Sen'nin! On the eastern side, we have Jackie Chun! A total mystery with an enigmatic vibe to him and the speech of a wiseman. A man who has plenty to share on every martial arts related topic! Can you share some of your wisdom before the battle, Jackie-san!?" the announcer moved his microphone closer to Jackie who just nabbed it away from the stunned tournament official.

"Helloo!" Jackie sung out into the microphone. "I may look like I'm very popular and am teaching one billion students but I am, in fact, single, this is for all the Pichi-Pichi Gals out there in the audience, not for head in the clouds naïve fools thinking they can take on martial arts!"

"Ummm… Well… Okay…" the announcer scratched his cheek while wrestling the microphone off of Jackie Chun who had begun to put on quite the show for the audience, involving some deep-steps dancing and a musical number. "In that case, you two can begin!"

The toll of the gong announced the end to Jackie's unsanctioned buffoonery and the beginning of the match. Tenshinhan took his fighting stance immediately, the same one he used against Yamcha and the one that Chayote had ripped off as an attempt to piss him off. Maybe just a little bit because of the disrespect he showed to the Kamehameha as well. A move she had so much trouble picking up…

"I could hardly stomach watching you act that way." Tenshinhan admitted with a bitter face. "A respectable martial artist with no sense of pride, what a joke! You kept on asking to be knocked out."

"Oh? Then why didn't you attack?" Jackie wondered, still standing tall with both his hands behind him.

"Because the battle hadn't started then. Why would I attempt to gain an unfair advantage like that when I can beat you just fine fair and square." Tenshinhan seemed almost offended by the old man bringing up such a suggestion.

"Indeed you are no longer the student of Tsuru Sen'nin or Taopaipai." Jackie Chun nodded and closed his eyes before opening them full of fighting tension and wisdom, one he projected during the battles he spectated. It might have taken a while but Jackie Chun finally got into fighting mood. "Come then, as a member of the older generation, I take it up to myself to whip you back onto the path of truth you've strayed from!"

"Truth!?" Tenshinhan took off with a rush at the old man. He threw a pair of strikes, all of which Jackie Chun promptly blocked while the two exchanged quick jabs and kicks. Tenshinhan had an impressive range advantage over the much shorter old man, meaning he could spare extending his arms and feet fully whereas Jackie Chun could have only responded with elbow or knee strikes as his only method for attack and defense.

"That's right! You are lying to yourself, which is why you cannot achieve your full potential still! You may hate Goku and Chayote but you have a lot in common with them." Jackie declared before receiving a handful of lightning fast jabs that threw him off balance. Attempting to reason with the opponent who was already in full rushdown mode may not have been something to be attributed to his boundless wisdom.

Jackie's eyes whited out momentarily after each strike, his body molded and twisted, cracked and churned in response to every strike. Tenshinhan truly was a monster to be able to apply this much pressure onto a genius of martial arts who has transcended his own humanity, such as Muten Roshi was.

Tenshinhan let out a battle cry while splitting Tenshinhan's afterimage in two with a high-kick. The three eyes of the martial artist raced across the ring, struggling to keep up with the flashy and skilled movements of his opponent. Tenshinhan threw a wild elbow strike behind him, striking in an angle he wasn't even looking at directly but pinpointing Jackie Chun's location perfectly, despite his speedy movements and constant use of the Afterimage.

Jackie grunted in pain while he stopped his opponent's elbow and entrapped it, pushing it upward to cause Tenshinhan immediate tension and pain. By anticipating the fact that he'd be at all times perceived by Tenshinhan's uncanny third eye ability, even during Afterimage, Jackie managed to read his opponent's moves just like he described Goku to be able to do subconsciously during Goku's match.

"I see…" Goku mumbled to himself.

"He's teaching you two how to fight him." Krillin nodded.

"He's hardly teaching me anything if I don't understand what the heck you two are talking about…" Chayote raised an eyebrow at the two know-it-alls.

"He used Afterimage and it didn't work. He's telling us not to use it." Goku explained. "Tenshinhan's weird, it's like he can track everything you do, no matter how fast you do it or how much you try to trick him."

"Yeah well… He's winning at the moment, he's got his opponent's elbow on lock so it worked for him." Chayote crossed her arms.

"It only worked because he knew it wouldn't work, so he prepared for the fact it won't work." Krillin may have believed he explained it perfectly clear but, given the content of what he had just said, Chayote wondered if he knew how meaningless the words he said seemed.

"You seem to believe that training by your lonesome, acquiring strength alone is the path to strength but that's what keeps you from becoming truly powerful! Walking the path of a martial artist together with someone, looking up to someone, that is the way to improvement! It is because you lack that that you will never match up to Goku or Chayote." Jackie explained with a strict stare of a punishing father as he continued to aggravate the elbow hold he had Tenshinhan in.

"Even more…" Jackie spread his feet out while he locked them over Tenshinhan's calves and sent the pain-ridden opponent down on the ring while he transitioned into a far more painful, ground-based submission hold. "Not only you are wrong about your philosophy, but you've also managed to get it right by becoming this strong and then lie to yourself about how you've become this strong!"

Jackie's hold began to falter. Tenshinhan had gotten a second wind and managed to recoup his worn out by pain mind while putting his remarkable physical strength to work at last. With each passing moment Jackie's grip began to slip, Jackie's shaking body began to give space to Tenshinhan's brutish attempts to force himself out of the hold. It was only a matter of time before Jackie couldn't deny the fact that his younger opponent was also his far superior physically and he disengaged the hold before Tenshinhan could break it and exploit the opening he had created.

This entire time she spent on Earth Chayote kept on seeing the same scenario unfurling. A superior power being overwhelmed and outplayed by greater skill. This was one of few times where the mad power of the opponent managed to outdo a slight difference in skill. Was there even a difference in pure martial arts skill? Tenshinhan was a prodigy and while Jackie was outplaying him for now, both fighters still held a decent amount of power and moves on the reserve and just about anything might have happened as this fight developed.

The two combatants breathed intensely, hunched over and clutching their sores, preparing to go one at another, solve their differences both physical and philosophical in this clash. It was self-evident that no man's body would break before their beliefs would broke first.


	48. The Entrancing Deadlock

"What was that, old man?" Tenshinhan's face shriveled like a dried out prune. So far the martial artist has only been working his matches out of professionalism. He had a goal to clash with the pair of Saiyans and defeat them, the goal he trained so hard and abandoned so much of what previously defined him for. Anything else was just stepping toward that goal. This was beginning to get personal, however.

"You've heard me. The reason why you are as strong as you are now is not that you've abandoned everyone and sought power on your own. It is because you've had a friend by your side and stayed true to your spirit and pride as a martial artist." Jackie Chun declared, taking a brief moment to glance at Chiaotzu who was observing the brawl from the sidelines.

Tenshinhan placed his hands by the center of his face, fingers spread out toward his eyes. "Solar Fist!" he yelled out, forcing bright light flash and reach as far as the rays of light could, blinding everyone present within its range with its unmatched brightness. Chayote and Goku grabbed their eyes and grunted in pain, they could only assume that Jackie Chun and everyone in the audience would have been similarly distracted by the technique.

Tenshinhan's battle cry, followed by Jackie Chun's grunt of pain relayed the message just fine, utilizing the advantage that his Solar Fist technique provided him with, Tenshinhan drove a brutal elbow strike to Jackie Chun's solar plexus, knocking the seasoned veteran off his feet and turning off all of his defenses. Tenshinhan proceeded with a relentless flurry of blows, which Jackie had to cover his head to shrug off, taking only minimal damage as the blows failed to penetrate his broadened defenses.

Despite limited success to his rapid attacks, Tenshinhan had scored a notable achievement of having forced Jackie's defenses to falter, his raised arms kept on slipping down from time to time and Tenshinhan had timed these openings just right for a cross chop headed for Jackie's neck. A hit like that would have turned off not only just Jackie's defenses but put the old man out for the count, no matter how lively and powerful, how experienced or skilled he was.

Jackie's hands seemed to erupt with girth, overflowing with power that resulted in awesome muscular growth as the old-timer, with his eyes still closed and suffering from the irritation of the Solar Fist, reached out to the sides and caught Tenshinhan by the three-eyed warrior's wrists, locking the arms in place.

"An impressive technique, but it does little to prevent me from sensing your Ki after the initial flash," Jackie explained why he was able to defend himself after the first series of onslaughts to his bodily integrity. "Are you sure that you wish to challenge me to a battle of techniques, for my techniques are nothing short from magnificent."

"Interesting…" Tenshinhan smirked while the two struggled in close proximity, each trying to overpower the other to deliver a finishing strike of this particular engagement. "Nothing would be more pleasing than to prove a know-it-all old-timer wrong, I would know, for I've done the same to Tsuru Sen'nin."

The two stopped their struggle by forcefully pulling each other's limbs apart from one another and disengaging to catch their breaths. Jackie wiped the slobber and traces of blood from his lip, his body canceled out the excessive muscular growth that had overcome his upper half temporarily during the clash to preserve strength during times when it was not needed.

"Oh! What a breathtaking engagement, ladies and gentlemen! Contestant Tenshinhan has employed the might of the sun itself to attack his opponent, striking with a blinding flash of light, luckily for you, yours truly was equipped with this pair of shades which helped him keep track of the battle! Well… As much of it as I can normally…" the announcer looked excited over his successful way of defeating Tenshinhan's technique before letting his embarrassment consume him and scratching his cheek.

"So you've humiliated your old master, you say?" Jackie Chun stood straight, canceling out his normal, wide and balanced fighting stance. Given how he just declared to accept Tenshinhan's challenge of comparing techniques, one he considered foolish, it was of no shock that he'd adopt a stance used by one of his techniques.

"If we were still following him, he would still have us scamming people out of their money, abusing what he thinks is power instead of looking on to what's ahead!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth in anger when recalling his old master. "It was an important first step on our journey. He was an old fool, not even master Taopaipai would have killed him if given the chance, old master no longer deserves a warrior's death."

"I see… I am glad to hear that you did not cross a line you'd have regretted once you've abandoned your youthful foolishness and looked ahead to a path of honesty and pride." Jackie's expression gleamed with serenity while he flexed his hands out and began waving them in front of him as if channeling great amounts of Ki.

"That's…" Tenshinhan's eyes widened. He had seen this technique, not even too long ago – in Jackie Chun's last fight even.

"That's right, the Hypnosis Technique!" Jackie Chun declared while his eyes began shining red and Ki waves sensible only to those capable of sensing Ki left from his relaxed hands while they worked through the motions.

Tenshinhan's body slumped, his upper body hunched over with only his shaking legs maintaining some degree of stance while his face sunk in the shadows. The Hypnosis Technique was a dangerous tool when employed in a World's Martial Arts Technique setting, after all, someone might have simply obliged the opponent to ring themselves out or surrender outright like that.

"You old fool!" Tenshinhan yelled out into the air as his body flexed out again and charged forward with a nimble and flexible dash. Tenshinhan delivered a cross straight to Jackie Chun's jaw, throwing the old man off his feet and making him stumble back before transitioning into a stiff middle kick. Jackie blocked it and vaulted over his back a few times, approaching his back to the ring wall while his hands continued to make massaging motions over the air in front of him.

"Did you really think I would be unable to defeat mere trickery like this? I've trained with Chiaotzu, you know!" Tenshinhan clenched his fist out in front of him and then swiped his hand aside as if physically dismissing Jackie's technique. It was then that Tenshinhan stopped and his eyes began twitching as his resolve to go on with the fighting faltered, the martial artist then turned for his paled out companion before returning back to the fight on hand.

"Well, well… I see that you've finally stumbled onto your answer all by yourself. Experience dictates that young people don't learn unless they think they've come onto the answer by themselves… What a pain…" Jackie stroke the back of his wig while he caught his breath. "That's right. It isn't because you abandoned your master that you've grown this strong, it is because you've hardened yourself alongside your true friend and partner, just like Krillin and Yamcha did."

"Th-That's not… You're wrong!" Tenshinhan clenched his fists in denial.

"Oh? Then I challenge you to look me in the eye and tell me that Chiaotzu is nothing but a pawn to you. Just a lackey you use to rig tournament matches more to your liking and someone who fights the fights you deem unworthy of your attention," Jackie pressed on with a harder tone of voice.

"I… I cannot…" Tenshinhan admitted. "Chiaotzu has been alongside me the whole time. He's a friend, one whose pride and wellbeing is as important to me as that of my own."

"Now that you have abandoned your foolish misdirection, you can begin walking the path of honesty with yourself, the path that leads to strength of body and mind – the very thing every martial artist seeks," Jackie Chun nodded to himself exuding calmness and wisdom.

"Hmph…" Tenshinhan smirked, finally breaking out of the spell he was under while struggling to get himself to his grips. "Fight me, old man. Now that you claim that I am ready to walk the path of true strength, I am curious to see what exactly has changed. I wish to see where this new path takes me!"

Jackie stroke his beard. "Hmm… Normally I would have left this fight alone for there is no point to it anymore. You have discovered the path of truthfulness that is essential to any martial artist, I have witnessed first-hand the eagerness to improve that defines the next generation and the fact that it would never grow lazy or dishonor the memory of their masters. There is no use for me to fight anymore but… Very well. I shall help you by pushing you as far on your new path as my old back will let me."

Jackie's hands reached out in wide waves, once more resuming the soft and subtle motions that he used for his Hypnosis Technique earlier. Tenshinhan looked so confused by the fact that the old man would employ a technique he knew for a fact to be pointless that he almost broke his stance and his lowered his guard.

"What is the meaning of this, I have shown you that no technique which I have seen will work on me the second time!" Tenshinhan inquired, looking almost offended that Jackie would resort to the same technique again.

"Heh, but this is not the Hypnosis Technique, young man, this is the Sleepy Boy Technique!" Jackie Chun declared before beginning to humming a lovely lullaby which he had thoroughly ruined with his choppy, old man's voice.

"Mock me at your own peril, old man!" Tenshinhan clenched his fists with so much tension that they began to quiver with force. He spread his own hands out and began mirroring Jackie Chun's motions. "Hypnosis Technique!"

"Oh! Contestant Tenshinhan displays previously unseen talent by perfectly mirroring the technique of Contestant Jackie Chun he had seen only a few times previously!" the announcer yelled out.

Tenshinhan's knee took a plunge as the young man struggled with sleepiness. Jackie Chun's eyes gleamed red, mirroring the three-pronged glow of his opponent's own eyes. The first-time hypnotist drove his left hand out to keep his body from hitting the ground as the pull of gravity and the allure of the hardy ring tiles beneath him became more and more attractive to Tenshinhan. With a dull thud, Tenshinhan fully slumped his body onto the floor.

"Oh no!" the announcer turned to the audience while gesturing with his hands in an exaggerated manner, as was his way, "It appears that the technique which Contestant Tenshinhan had mocked so much has claimed him! Contestant Tenshinhan is down!"

"No way!" Chayote whistled.

"Quick, throw him out!" Yamcha yelled in encouragement to Jackie's victory. While his lid wasn't tilting with nearly as much of a distaste for the three-eyed martial artist at the moment, having just seen him being humbled and taught a lesson, Yamcha still didn't like Tenshinhan all that much and would have much preferred to see Jackie pull off the win.

"He can't…" Krillin shook his head, "Look!"

"Ah!" Goku exclaimed in shock, "The old timer's hypnotized!"

"Oh no!" the announcer stumbled back, "It appears that we've hit a hypnotic standoff! Contestant Tenshinhan was put to sleep by Contestant Jackie's Sleepy Boy technique but, before he could collapse, Contestant Tenshinhan had successfully hypnotized Contestant Jackie Chun! What an unexpected, shocking turnout!"

The audience rustled in their own version of what was to be done, the ones that were on board with Tenshinhan's journey and cool vibes were all for disqualifying Jackie Chun for being hypnotized, some of them advocated letting the situation play out and seeing what would come out of the situation. Jackie Chun, despite his hypnotist having fallen asleep, was just standing there back by the wall, waiting for orders to fulfill.

Those that preferred the hip old guy vibes of Jackie, wanted the announcer to begin the count or flat out disqualify Tenshinhan, for his consciousness had slipped away into slumber and surely that meant the same thing as being knocked out. At least it did so in their eyes.

"Order in the audience!" the announcer exclaimed, utilizing the full might of his microphone while he took it onto the ring. "That is just the kind of a situation in which you need a trained professional! That is why I am here, to make the tough calls and it is self-evident that while both contestants are compromised, only one of them is down, while the other one is still standing. For that reason, even if Contestant Jackie cannot call for the count, I will begin counting anyway. If Contestant Tenshinhan cannot get back on his feet by the count of ten – the match will be over!"

The audience had mixed reactions. They had some reasons to question such a ruling, some of them were behind Jackie Chun the whole way so they had no problem with the ruling, the others felt that with Jackie Chun being unable to call for a count, it was unfair for the announcer to begin counting anyway. Either way, the announcer raised his finger and started counting.

"Hey, you!" Yamcha turned to Chiaotzu, "Don't even think to try some of your funny business with waking Tenshinhan up mentally, we're onto you!"

"No." Chiaotzu shook his head. Something in him was much different this time, he reacted with emotion, there were crystal specks of tears hanging on the bottom of his eyelids. The little guy must have taken being acknowledged as Tenshinhan's friend in public pretty close to heart. "Ten-san wouldn't like it if I woke him up. He would throw the fight if I did anyway. I will not do anything like that."

"One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six…" the announcer went on with the countdown to Tenshinhan's inevitable elimination. Chayote could hardly believe that she'd lose the opportunity of fighting one of the two people she stayed on Earth to fight for three more years. If Tenshinhan lost, she'd leave this stupid tournament behind after settling things with Goku and challenge him to a fight outside the ring. Before she departs, she needs to settle these things, she's invested this much time into it already!

A sound of human-cannonball hurling through thin air snapped Chayote out of her frail frustrations, Tenshinhan had hurled through the space between him and Jackie Chun and delivered a stiff knee strike to the back of Jackie's head after arcing over his opponent with more flips than Goku could probably count to. With whited out eyes, Jackie collapsed to the floor in a pathetic sprawl of defeat.

"Astonishing!" the announcer called out after a brief pause of disbelief. "Contestant Tenshinhan has risen up from his sleep! How did he do it, does he only sleep for seconds a day?! Did he somehow manage to break out of Jackie's technique through sheer willpower!? Did someone in the audience hint him to an external stimulus that woke him up, we will soon find out!"

The announcer wriggled onto the stage and ran up to Tenshinhan, shoving the microphone into his face. Before the announcer could even complete the repeat of his question, he could hear faint breathing into the microphone, a visual inspection of Tenshinhan's face revealed that two of his human eyes were closed but the third one was open and racing across the stage.

"Oh!" the announcer jumped up and turned for the audience. "Contestant Tenshinhan appears to still be asleep! Incredible, he attacked his opponent while still fully asleep! And now the stages had turned, Contestant Jackie is down and I must begin the count!"

"Wait, this is all Chiaotzu's trickery!" Yamcha pointed at Chiaotzu who shook his tearful head and tried to convince everybody it wasn't him. His expression seemed troubled enough by these accusations that Chayote would have called him innocent. She knew what a guilty person being caught looked like, she'd seen it plenty of times when the boys back at Planet Vegeta looted the meat warehouses and ate their fill before being caught grease-handed. Chiaotzu seemed innocent and hurt that he was still being accused.

"No, I swear, this wasn't me! Ten-san is sleep-walking, that's all!" Chiaotzu pointed at Tenshinhan who kept on standing on two feet and wandering across the ring.

"Sleep-walking my ass! How is such a thing even possible!?" Yamcha took a couple of steps toward Chiaotzu's side of the spectator's area.

"Ten-san honed his mind and body through meditation, even when he's entranced, he's is completely aware of his environment, he might be asleep but some subconscious part of him is still displaying limited control over his body." Chiaotzu pointed out.

Yamcha looked only half-satisfied by such an explanation but he didn't have anything better to suggest so he looked back at the ring to see how this situation would unfold. The announcer raised his finger up into the sky and began counting.

"One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six…" the announcer went on.

"Hmph… What a useless old man…" Chayote mumbled, disappointed by such an underwhelming conclusion to the match between two martial arts legends. "He seems to care more about his Pichi-Pichi girls than martial arts…"

"Pichi-Pichi? Where…?" Jackie lifted his head up and then peeled his entire upper body off the floor. Having heard Pichi-Pichi in his trance but seen no Pichi-Pichi, Jackie stood up, dusted off his uniform and began examining the fighting ring more carefully. "Where are the Pichi-Pichi girls!?"

"Unbelievable!" the announcer exclaimed, "Contestant Jackie Chun also stood up at the six-count, his trance was broken up by… Well… I'm not quite sure what but… He is up regardless!"

"Huh…?" Jackie Chun looked around frantically, examining the surroundings that have changed drastically in his "absence" and then massaged his numb neck in the back where his wound was beginning to swell purple. "What did I miss? What's wrong with Tenshinhan?" he pointed at the subconsciously drifting opponent of his.

"Contestant Tenshinhan appears to be sleep-walking, since he is up on his feet and so are you, you may continue the match!" the announcer explained the gist of things, with a rather taken aback expression, Jackie Chun took his fighting stance and prepared to continue this clash of generations match against his sleep-walking opponent.


	49. Fighting Harmony

Jackie Chun sharpened his fighting stance. The old veteran must have seen through the self-evident – with his opponent sleep-walking, he might have had a chance at landing blows he would not have had a chance with previously. Also, even if Tenshinhan did land any freak attacks on him, surely they'd be weaker when the one delivering them was asleep.

The limitless determination of the ace of the last generation left his chest with a tight growl as the worn-out martial arts master blasted off at his opponent. Jackie's bent hands and sharp feet gave it their best shot at hitting Tenshinhan with Jackie's stiffest blows yet but Tenshinhan seemed like a whole different kind of beast altogether. The three-eyed fighter danced around his opponent, dodged each and every single strike while not missing out on a chance to lock the old man up and deliver a solid beating back whenever his fighter's instinct called for it.

Jackie stumbled back after a strong backhand smack with his nose bleeding all over his white beard. His black martial arts suit slipped off his slumping body, forcing the old master to throw it aside and reposition his stance. Not before sliding his arm under his nose to wipe the blood drooping out from it from time to time.

"Oh no! It appears that Contestant Jackie Chun cannot land a single blow, even when his opponent is completely asleep!" the announcer translated the hi-speed events transpiring on the arena to the audience even though he himself could barely perceive half of it.

"Oh no…" Jackie Chun closed his eyes and calmed his racing heart. "It's not "even when", it's "because"!"

"Huh? Please explain!" the announcer made his way onto the ring and rushed up to the weathered and worn out martial arts master.

"I don't blame you for this simple mistake for I have made it right now as well." Jackie smirked. "You see, after seeing my opponent sleep-walking I have assumed that his mind was no longer there, that he was open for attacks but… What I should have been worrying about was what has replaced the consciousness that left that vacancy."

"And what would that be?" the announcer wondered.

"Instinct." Jackie Chun nodded to himself while examining Tenshinhan's lazy movements that threatened to strike faster than lightning if the unconscious martial artist deemed it so. "He is operating by pure instinct, muscle memory and pure dreams of what he's picked up as a martial artist. No complicated planning, no experience or forethought can match the brutal, empty void of instinct."

"Most impressive… So what are you planning to do?" the announcer pushed his microphone up closer to Jackie, brimming with curiosity.

"In order to beat my opponent, I must also vacate my mind! Luckily enough, our clash of techniques has not yet finished…" Jackie took a couple of breaths. The old master closed his eyes and focused his face like he'd have looked while computing a complicated math problem in his mind. Then his eyes opened, his entire face had changed alongside with the look on his face.

"Drunken Fist Technique!" Jackie chuckled with blushing cheeks while pointing peace signs up in the air with both arms. "Woot, woot! I'm a happy little cow!"

The previously serious and stoic martial arts master stumbled like a complete imbecile who not only lacked the elementary ability to fight, he seemed to have a great struggle merely walking around. Jackie constantly tripped up over his own feet, stumbling and bumbling, looking as if he was about to plant on his face any time now.

"What's this technique?" Chayote shook her head in disbelief of what she was seeing. Fighting styles and martial arts techniques were meant to enhance one's combat ability, compensate differences in speed and power through skill, discipline and profound mastery of one's own body. This seemed like the old geezer had completely regressed himself.

"Oh… I guess Chayote wouldn't have seen a drunk person…" Krillin pointed at Chayote.

"A what person?" Goku turned at his friends with a decent amount of bafflement in his own face forcing his friends to jump back in surprise.

"He's acting like he's intoxicated." Yamcha explained.

"Oh…" Chayote seemed to grasp the basic concept.

"Why would you say it in an even longer word as if it explains anything?" Goku pouted and crossed his arms over his chest.

"He's acting like he's just had bad food… I guess the Earthling equivalent would be bad apples." Chayote scratched her head, trying to relay it in more understandable in Earthling terms since her own closest comparison would have made it too confusing even for Krillin and Yamcha who, while knew what intoxication was, were Earthlings and therefore unfamiliar with alien fauna.

"Oh… Why?" Goku appeared enlightened for a brief second before looking back at his friends.

"That's the question, isn't it?" Chayote shrugged. One disadvantage of having Jackie Chun be the one fighting was not having him around explaining things that were truly lessons transpiring right in front of them.

Out of nowhere, Jackie began stumbling into Tenshinhan's general direction, throwing a mad flurry of blows at him while still fumbling at him. The strikes didn't appear to be packing much strength since they lacked any semblance of balance, Jackie seemed to draw his force entirely out of his shoulder but this seemed to make the flurry far faster in the process.

Tenshinhan took the strikes and grunted, still half-asleep. His buff chest glowed with red swelling from where Jackie had pummeled him. His eyes fluttered and shot wide. He was awake at last, though, if he had known what had happened while he was out, he'd have likely chosen to enjoy the benefits of letting his natural instinct guide him through the battle.

"What's going on?" Tenshinhan wondered, his own cheeks blushed a bit when he noticed the peculiar manner in which the honorable Jackie Chun was acting.

"Oh my… I think I'm going to fall!" Jackie Chun slurred out while stumbling about, grabbing for anything solid to prevent his fall but grasping only on air. Tenshinhan jumped forward, worried that his opponent would fall down and hurt himself as he did not appear to be in the right condition to fight. Jackie's iron-grip locked around the center of Tenshinhan's chest, pinching a sensitive part that no amount of training could harden sufficiently and throwing Tenshinhan off-balance.

A storm of strikes ran rampant across the three-eyed martial artist's face before Jackie finished the combo with a chipper jumping sole butt. Clutching at his mid-section and embarrassed over his folly, Tenshinhan withdrew to safer distance from his inebriated opponent.

"So that's your move, huh, old man…" Tenshinhan grit his teeth. For the first time in this clash, he felt to be the underdog who was being pushed instead of the youthful challenger with more energy than he knew what to do with who was doing all the pushing. "In that case… Volleyball Fist!"

Tenshinhan charged forward without any time wasted thinking if lunging at an unpredictable opponent was the right idea. Before he could even approach close enough to attack his opponent, Tenshinhan performed a slide across the ring, aiming to strike at Jackie's unsteady feet with it, what the martial artist did not expect, however, was that Jackie Chun would trip and fall over on him before he could even deliver his sliding kick, ruining Tenshinhan's offensive.

"Oh my… I seem to have…" Jackie Chun rubbed his red nose with an embarrassed face while seated atop of Tenshinhan.

Tenshinhan shot out his arms in a double palm strike, just like he'd have struck a volleyball but he failed to land his strikes where he aimed them after Jackie folded backward with an arched back as if he had just snoozed off. Just after the strikes were delivered, Jackie bent back and yawned.

"Huh… I dozed off, I think… What'd I miss?"

Tenshinhan roared out, creating a bubble of Ki around him just like he did when he was wrecking the entire island by meditating and letting his true power leak out. Jackie flew off of him and rolled back, almost fumbling out of the ring. In his fake-intoxication he would have surely fallen out, had he not hit his head against the ring which drove tears to Jackie's eyes and some sense back to his movements.

"Who could have thought…" Tenshinhan grunted while adjusting his position to that he took when meditating while his body rose off the ring floor and began floating in mid-air, still inside his devastating Ki bubble that was slowly unraveling the ring around it. "Movements that allow you to avoid the attacks of an opponent far more powerful than you… Heh, makes me wonder just what other techniques martial arts can bring you up to?"

"That is for you to experience yourself…" Jackie Chun stroke his beard while his other hand stroke the back of his own head to check if he wasn't bleeding through his wig. "You are the master of your own journey, young man. Go break your leg and surpass me, or fold and don't. That is entirely up to you, although, after seeing your potential first-hand, I must admit that your talent for martial arts is second to few."

Tenshinhan raised up his fist out in front of him, clutching it hard enough to force crackles of lightning to erupt from the small shockwave that his compressed force had created around his fist. "You do of course realize that as a martial artist I cannot take that declaration lightly. My pride compels me to challenge those you deem superior to me in talent and defeat them!"

"And so you shall… But before, you still have a match to win." Jackie Chun broke his usual fighting stance and pressed his fists by his hips, leaning his body forward and letting every single muscle in his body tense up.

"Does he need to use the toilet?" Goku pointed at Jackie.

"No. His Ki… It's skyrocketing!" Chayote couldn't believe what she was sensing. Had she been wearing a scouter right now, this man's power level would undoubtedly be rising right now. How was that even possible!? One's fighting potential was meant to be determined from birth! One's power level might have grown through tough battles and training but not like this, it couldn't have been possible to cheat one's own power level. One's very own role in the universe…

"Are you saying that Jackie's been keeping some power still?" Krillin's face twisted until it was almost blue in discomfort. He must have been realizing that Jackie's power might have surpassed that of his own, it was a shocking realization to someone who didn't know Jackie Chun's true identity and who only knew Jackie Chun as an old wise man who got himself eliminated during the preliminaries last time.

"Incredible, this power… You're my equal, I'd think…" Tenshinhan couldn't hide his excitement after seeing Jackie Chun reveal his Max Power form. Jackie's seemingly frail body that had turned into the build of a muscular and fit martial artist in the prime, the more Jackie approached his limit, was now just a mockery of what the human body should have been capable of.

Jackie was a colossal mixture of muscular girth, growth and overwhelming power. "Now I'm Super-Serious, let's see if you can handle this one, whippersnapper…"

"Come!" Tenshinhan taunted his opponent who dashed onward as if the unbelievable growth in body mass and bulk did absolutely nothing to diminish his speed.

Jackie threw a smashing cross downward, planting his fist through the ring and shaking the ground underneath. Tenshinhan, emanating his own overflowing Ki aura, thrust out his knee while throwing an elbow strike out. Like some twisted version of bodily scissors, Tenshinhan's elbow and knee smashed Jackie's massive arm in between each other, pinching it to great effectiveness.

"That technique…" Goku's eyes turned serious for a moment.

"Yeah, it's just like what Muten Roshi used before he blew up the Moon, isn't it?" Yamcha realized.

"So it is, but it's useless against Tenshinhan. The Kamehameha is useless against him." Chayote nodded.

"Yeah, but buffing up like that has to make you stronger. I bet Jackie Chun's counting on that strength to keep him in the competition." Krillin declared, fisting the sky in excitement and wonder at this impressive old man.

Tenshinhan threw his own fusillade of punches at Jackie Chun's direction but they bounced off of Jackie Chun's rock-hard body when the martial arts master blew out his chest and focused all of his Ki into it. Jackie jumped onward with a knee strike, throwing Tenshinhan flying back and toward the edge of the ring. The eternal martial artist followed his opponent and grabbed him by the ankle, flipping him over his head and slamming him into the ground on the other side.

Jackie attempted a repeat of his earlier slam, swinging Tenshinhan's body over his head and throwing the limp martial artist like a deadweight in front of him. Tenshinhan's arms reached out for the ring floor and broke his fall. Chayote could almost hear the crack in Tenshinhan's bones and the churning of his muscles after taking that brutish impact. With a push from his upper body, Tenshinhan transferred the force into his free leg to deliver a kick to the side of Jackie's head.

Blood burst from the wound where Jackie got kicked. It was a curious reaction to see right after Jackie had managed to stonewall his opponent's entire combination of strikes.

"There must be a reason why Muten Roshi uses this transformation just to boost his Kamehameha," Chayote stated. "It seems like it burns through stamina like nothing else and it isn't like an old-timer like Jackie has plenty of it to spare…"

"Yeah, I'd wager he saw he was hitting his limit before, that's why he tapped into this forbidden move to try and gamble it all on a win." Yamcha nodded in agreement.

With his opponent thrown off his feet, Tenshinhan saw his opening to go on the offensive and all three of his eyes now only saw red. The three-eyed martial artist leaned back in a stance that shocked Yamcha and forced him to press his body to the protective wall that separated him from the ring. It was the Wolf Fang Fist stance, no second guesses about it.

Although the initial stance was mirrored from Yamcha's ace move, the entire rush attack following it was different entirely, Tenshinhan, after putting his hands up and bending his fingers out, forming his palms like the paw of a great cat, delivered a crushing combination of blows before flipping over his front to attack Jackie's exposed left shoulder and finishing the combination with a jumping knee strike that blasted Jackie flying and threw him off his feet in an instant.

"White Tiger Paw!" Tenshinhan yelled out after breaking his stance and putting his two tired palms together, as if in position for prayer. The three-eyed fighter took a moment to calm himself down afterward.

"Heh, it would seem that in the end, it came down not to how many techniques we know, but instead in how much we can grow and learn while fighting." Jackie Chun smiled while his roided out body returned to not even his serious state but to his frail, base state, one that befits a timeless man.

"What are you doing? You can clearly still stand!" Tenshinhan looked displeased with his opponent folding like that.

"Perhaps, but fighting further is of no use. Your uncanny power forced me to tap into reserves that burn through my stamina. I am now even weaker than the version of me you pushed to his limits. Let's try and make it easier on the tournament staff and not have me fire my last-ditch Max Kamehameha only for it to prove useless…" Jackie Chun chuckled to himself, coughing as he felt something heavy going up and down his chest. "I give up!"

"Oh! Contestant Jackie Chun has surrendered! It appears that while his age provided him with ample advantages, the disadvantages were what made all the difference!" the announcer declared the end of the match.

The audience seemed like they would be tearing the roof off of the already plenty shaken building of the World Martial Arts Tournament stage. Goku, Yamcha and Krillin burst onto the stage the moment the match was called. As the audience raged in an expression of their unlimited hype over the match they've just witnessed, Jackie gave Chayote a serious look.

"This reception, this is actually a lesson for you…" Jackie let her know mentally. "This is the reception that a martial artist who has chosen the path of light receives. Tenshinhan, even if he might not yet be aware of it, made an equal part of this fighting harmony, he too is a martial artist of the light. And it was not because of me, he chose to abandon Tsuru Sen'nin all by himself… All he needed to be fixed was a little nudge."

"Are you sure, old-timer?" Chayote surprised Jackie with a telepathic message of her own. She didn't just think something for the old man to read it and translate it to himself, she reached out for his own mind actively, revealing a hidden ace that she would have much rather kept to herself. A result of Baba's and Devil Man's mystical training. It made sense that Roshi's own sister would know his tricks just as well if not better than he did. "He only abandoned his old bastard because of me and Kakarot…"

"He did…" Jackie Chun pocketed his hands while approaching his fallen top of the uniform and picking it up. The old man bent it over his hand and closed his eyes while he jumped off the ring, turned and looked off into the distance. "Although that's what makes me even more proud of him. He realized that the path of darkness would not serve him right, it would not grant him the power he needs to overcome his cosmic challengers and it made him reach out for the light by himself. Yes… Indeed there's no further use for me to meddle in the affairs of the young generation. They've surpassed even my wildest expectations…"

Yamcha approached Tenshinhan while the two engaged each other in a cold staredown, eye-to-eye.

"That stance, those moves seemed oddly familiar…" Yamcha teased his rival.

"Oh? I was surprised you could see any of it to identify it. You must forgive me, using a technique I've just made up on the spot the first time can come out a bit slow…" Tenshinhan returned the jab.

"Well, in any case, glad my moves served you some use," Yamcha pocketed his hands with a smile.

"Yes, I suppose your style isn't completely useless after all. I might have been in a pickle if it wasn't for that light breeze of a rush attack." Tenshinhan extended his hand out for a shake.

Even if the fighting had long since ceased, the following handshake had enough fortitude in it to shake mountains and it did a better job of relaying the pent up feelings of both martial artists sharing it than one might have been reasonably expecting it to.

* * *

_**Author's Note: I sort of wanted Jackie and Tenshinhan to keep going at it, if anyone's read my stories before, they'd know that I'm not above writing a three or four chapter long fights. Still, since the next chapter's gonna be a round No. 50, I wanted it to feature a noteworthy clash, namely Goku VS Chayote. I'm gonna try to make it live up to a fight reserved for the 50th chapter :D**_

_**The White Tiger Paw is an original rush attack. It's supposed to be a spin-off of Wolf Fang Fist which Tenshinhan saw Yamcha use in his match. Tenshinhan is loosely based on Erlang Shen, a Chinese God with the third eye. Erlang does have some ties with a tiger, not the White Tiger of Chinese mythology but it's close enough for a trashy Dragon Ball fanfiction! It also brings Tenshinhan and Yamcha closer together, further cementing them as rivals, although on more friendly terms than the "Hates each other's guts" status their relationship had earlier.**_

_**A stone that hits an entire murder of crows is a stone I'm always ready to throw!**_


	50. Homecoming on the Horizon

The World Martial Arts Tournament took a short break so that some basic patching could have been done to the ring before the final match of the semi-finals could begin. The monks were busy tearing the ground dirt into the holes and applying the tiles where the ring got busted. It would not be a perfect or full repair but it should serve fine in containing the following match for as long as any ring could hold it.

Finally, after waiting around for this long, Chayote could feel things getting interesting. Not just interesting, scary enough to send pleasant tingles down her spine. Goku had turned into a monster just before parting for the three years training. After having his strength restored by the Divine Dragon of the Dragon Balls, Goku could have possibly matched if not outmatched Chayote already back then, he spent three whole years training with his grandpa who, supposedly, was a great martial artist on his own. He must have been to restrain a Saiyan child and condition him as he did with Goku.

Truth be told, Chayote wasn't sure she could beat Goku at all and that was what made her excited. Ever since stepping out in front of that Saibaman she has been protected by the power governing the Universe, sent to a planet of weaklings to play around until she has served her use. Placed inside a hermetic bubble where she couldn't be hurt, no matter how hard she bashed her head against the wall and yet… Here he was, someone who could not only have hurt her but beat her.

Defeat wasn't terrifying whatsoever, if she was beaten badly enough, maybe she'd skyrocket in power just like Goku did, then they could finally do some fine training with one another and drive each other to brinks of power where Lord Frieza would have no other choice but take them in. Chayote punched her fists against one another and stretched out some. She's trained hard and listened to everything Baba and Devil Man told her about martial arts and mysticism, the latter was more Upa's department, true, but she'd taken everything within the reach of her hand just because that was the only way for her to match Goku right now…

"Umm…" Bulma's voice distracted Chayote. "You're all alone here?"

"Me being with the other fighters makes things uncomfortable. They want to cheer Kakarot on but they can't, because I'm there too. I don't want to get in the way of that so I've decided to prepare for the fight alone." Chayote replied.

"Well, I'm glad you did because sneaking into that place would have been way too difficult. I had planned to tell you this after the tournament but Oolong told me he saw you leave outside the contestants' area so I thought I'd surprise you before your match…" Bulma kept on beating around the bush. She didn't need to be concrete, Chayote had a feeling that she knew what the inventor was about to say.

"You've finished my spaceship?" she muttered. While it was not a rhetorical question, it may as well have been.

"Yeah. It took a while and Roshi wasn't happy I took time building your ship before restoring him to his size but… It was actually way more fun that way." Bulma smiled. "It has basically everything in your blueprints. You can go visit your home whenever you want to now."

Chayote wondered if Bulma knew that Chayote wouldn't just be "visiting" her home. Her plans initially encompassed going back to Planet Vegeta for good, taking Goku with her and training on their way home too. Becoming strong enough for Lord Frieza to take them in. Maybe beating the shit out of Mr. Popo was there as well but it got lost in the shuffle along the way...

"What's wrong? You don't seem excited, isn't that what you kept bugging me about for all those years?" Bulma tapped her foot.

"Thanks." Chayote jumped up and bowed her head like she'd seen Earthlings do when they were grateful. "I'd like to check it out after the tournament if it's okay with you."

"Wow, I didn't think that old geezer's sister, of all people, would be teaching you manners…" Bulma smiled and patted Chayote on the shoulder. "Just so you know, we're not just cheering on Goku. We're cheering on you two having a good time out there. Fighting's down here not like what you're used to. It's not all winners and losers. I didn't think I got it for the longest time but I think I do now, after seeing what fighting means to Yamcha – practicing martial arts makes everyone fighting into a winner. I still can't believe it when I'm saying it but… It seems to be the case."

"Thanks, Bulma, for everything. It looks like I wasn't the only one who got tamed a little bit." Chayote smirked before passing Bulma and beginning her walk to the spectators' area. She could feel the martial artists gathering near the ring, which made her believe that the match would not take too long to start.

"Heh… Wait… What is that supposed to mean!?" Bulma shook her fist out over her head and charged after Chayote before a pair of monks noticed her being loud and stopped her from entering the spectators' area. As mighty and stiff Bulma's punches were, it seemed that the monks were used to sterner stuff.

"So, do you think you can beat Chayote?" Krillin looked at Goku who was warming up, tightening his belt and stretching out.

"Who knows… That's what makes it really excitin', you know?" Goku smirked.

"You're really something, you know that, Goku? Chayote's been this immovable monster for the longest time, scaring the shit out of all of us, doing whatever she wanted and here you are about to go take her on without a hint of fear." Yamcha gave Goku an encouraging thumb up. "Guess that's Saiyan blood for you…"

"Yeah, I guess so… It's strange though, I've never really thought about any of that stuff. I've always just felt like I'm still the same old me, you know?" Goku jumped about on his feet before throwing a few punches out in the air and stepping out into the light and trading some glares with Tenshinhan who was waiting for the winner at the finals.

"Yeah, you may be Kakarot to Chayote but… You'll always be just Goku to us!" Krillin laughed out and pat Goku on the back. The two walked out until the edge of the ring together but then Krillin just let Goku walk the rest of the way on his own. Chayote stepped out not too long after from behind the pair of Yamcha and Krillin and followed Goku to the center of the ring where the announcer was hyping the audience up already.

"What we have here now is the end of the semi-finals of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament! For the next match, we have the repeat of the last tournament's finals – Contestant Chayote VS Contestant Son Goku!" the announcer pointed at the two contestants who have already made it to the stage and traded glances with one another. "The pair has done remarkable work to get this far and did not appear to struggle whatsoever, defining each other as true prodigies of martial arts and making all of us into believers of the wonders that the next generation can achieve!"

The audience rustled and waved their hands in agreement.

"Now, may the contestants take it to their respective ends of the ring and begin the match once the gong tolls!" the announcer raised his hand up, as instructed, Chayote and Goku took it to the western and eastern parts of the ring respectively and took their fighting stances. Goku appears to have abandoned his reckless but effective stance of both hands down, legs spread out and body completely open and adopted a modified version of his old stance. Likely after being scolded by his grandpa for one reason or another. Chayote extended her hands out and spread her legs in a shoulder-wide position, it was a stance that she herself made after studying under Devil Man and hearing a thing or two from Baba too.

Goku couldn't shake off his smirk. He read her at that moment, he truly was reading her like a book, Chayote could feel it. The fateful toll reverberated through her ears and down her body in resonances that rippled through her very soul and boiled her blood from within. Goku dashed right at her from the get-go, without taking any further time to size her up or make a battle plan. Who could have blamed him? He was hungry for this and so was Chayote.

Chayote's palms crossed together like the wings of a butterfly, blocking Goku's jumping kick. She felt pressure around her wrists, he was transitioning into a swing with his tail. The grip that his monkey limb had developed made Chayote drop all illusions that it had served as any kind of weak spot to Goku as well. His tail was hard enough to shave iron with each ruffled hair of its fur, such a limb could not have possibly been a weakness.

Goku spun around and clocked Chayote in the face with a straight punch. Chayote's head snapped back, slamming against Goku's and throwing the Saiyan boy back with a painful grunt. Goku flipped over his back and landed onto the ring with both his feet and charged at Chayote again with a flurry of his best blows. Chayote evaded them, blocking the problematic ones with her newly developed defensive stance before letting her "butterfly wings" flap over Goku's wrist and pull him in for an elbow smash right into his face, a counter she concluded with a middle kick which, due to Goku's size, hit him right in the head and sent the young man vaulting back to catch his breath and get himself together.

The audience roared. They could barely make anything of it out, to them it was just blurs and flashes followed by stills, frozen in time, of an injured combatant reeling back in pain before returning to the flashing and blitzing about. Goku and Chayote completely disappeared to their level of vision but when they returned, the passion and intrigue they fostered made the clash all the more glorious.

"Heh, simply amazin', you've picked up a thing or two in skill." Goku commended Chayote's improved martial arts.

"Your strength is incredible too, I actually felt that punch loosening my jaw up." Chayote gave him the image of smirking back in spades. She was right to study with Devil Man, she'd have been completely outplayed here fighting like she used to, getting hit to determine the enemy's strength, then adapting her own level of effort. She'd have flown right out of the ring with planning like that in just this one exchange. Goku was a serious opponent now, a real threat to her hyped up and much-awaited match against Tenshinhan.

"So then you won't complain if we get right down to it? It doesn't seem this ring could hold that much of us playing around…" Chayote wondered.

"Sure, just be warned, I've noticed your weakness so tread carefully." Goku nodded with a slight movement of his head. It wasn't quite his style to brag so Chayote felt a bit curious about what it was exactly that he had seen in her moves to be qualified as a weakness.

Chayote's image blurred and faded away. The image of all that transpired inside the ring and around it appeared to have been frozen in time, for the spectators it was so merely because they failed to believe that one could just disappear like that, to Goku it was because only his eyes were moving around, following Chayote's movements which they could keep up with while his body stood ready to respond to any incoming threats.

He knew his martial arts – respond too early or to a feint and it meant opening up for a hit, that would have meant eating a full onslaught of strikes which dropped one's stamina and power level a great deal. Son Goku likely didn't think in power level numbers as Chayote tended to, he thought in Ki signatures but the essence of it was pretty much the same.

Chayote came in from Goku's right, the side of the ring with the barrier walls donned with demon faces. Goku jumped aside to avoid the flying kick and tilted his own leg to throw Chayote off balance for a knee to her back. A trick that would have sent Chayote flying only served to disrupt and dissolve her Afterimage, forcing Goku's eyes to widen in surprise. Before he could return to following the entire ring instead of focusing just on Chayote's image, his leg tripped up from the sweep of Chayote's rush-in attack and he himself floated in mid-air without balance and totally weightless.

The female Saiyan vaulted backward, her feet smacked Goku's weightless body into the air while her body disappeared again in a mad dash to the skies. The image of Chayote's body elongated like spaghetti before just blinking out and in a moment's notice, she was right above Son Goku with a technique she used against Krillin during their match.

"Pinto Spear!" Chayote yelled out while diving with a shoulder slam right into Goku's dazed and flying body. Goku cried out in pain as his body bent out in an awkward angle, his hair went all over the place, confused about which of the opposite forces affecting them they should listen to while his eyes blanked out. The shoulder charge which hit the ground faster than a speeding comet and blasted rubble all over the place and sent ripples across the ring that left little to nothing of the recent repairs that the monks have made gained a fiery and glowing beam in appearance as the air around the diving pair bent in the shape of a searing pillar with a little bit of Chayote's leaking Ki aura to enhance the flashy visuals.

"T-Those flames…" Krillin's lip quivered in shock. "Were those back when she hit me with it too?"

"No, I don't believe they were. This Chayote is far different, her passion for this match is far more combustible than ever before. She looked ready to spear Goku right through the planet itself…" Muten Roshi stared frozen in intimidation of the powerful exchange of blows transpiring in front of him as well.

"So she really did hold back when fighting me…" Krillin's eyes shrunk in disappointment in both his friend's promise as well as his own abilities.

"No, I don't believe she did. I think it far more likely that she had improved the technique after using it on you once. This was not her own natural flight that elevated her this time, Chayote figured it was too slow, it gave you time to respond and channel your Kamehameha, which meant that Goku almost certainly would be able to respond as well. Chayote used the strength of her lower body to leap up past Goku and then used her flight only as a ceiling of sorts to repurpose her jumping direction downward off of the air itself." Roshi shook his head.

"To think that it takes us years to figure out ways in which to improve our techniques… Chayote does it in each battle…" Yamcha stared at his own fist with frustration.

"That is a trait both of these two share…" Muten Roshi smiled. He needed no further affirmation that the future of martial arts was safe after facing Tenshinhan but even if he had, he'd have seen everything he had needed to see right now.

Chayote floated out of the hole and landed to the side of the hole she had just created. The announcer rushed up to the hole and fixed his shades. He looked up to Chayote as if wondering if she wanted him to check if Goku went out of bounds with binoculars or something or at the very least to start the count but Chayote shook her head. She knew that Goku was made of sterner stuff, smashing into him didn't feel anything like smashing into Krillin.

Krillin was tough, surprisingly so, tougher even than Devil Man but… Goku… He felt like something different entirely. A force, a bar of iron. Chayote rubbed her shoulder with a light motion just to alleviate some of the numbness. It hurt for him, Chayote was sure of it but Goku didn't go anywhere near getting himself eliminated. Even if he would have fallen out of bounds with this slam, Chayote would want it the least for this match to end this way. No. The hole was best left dark and open until Goku surprised her.

Chayote didn't need to wait too long for the surprise as a ray of light burst out from the crater. In the beginning, Chayote thought it was the light of Goku's Kamehameha coming at her but it was nothing this predictable. It was Tenshinhan's Solar Fist technique! Pain and her own tears that the irritation summoned forced the Saiyan's eyes shut as she stumbled back, writhing in pain. An ache that was nothing like the smack of Goku's headbutt emerging from below that sent Chayote down on her back.

"Down! Contestant Chayote is down!" the announcer declared and raised his hand up for a count but Chayote broke it before he could count one in.

The first sight to greet Chayote's recovering eyesight was Goku cracking his neck about with a pained expression. His headbutt didn't come easy with Chayote's affinity to defend herself by keeping her Ki up at all times. Devil Man taught her better than to let her guard down while her opponent was out of her sight. Plus, Krillin had already surprised her with a move like that once, she would not get caught this way twice in the same damned tournament.

"Yeesh! Hitting your head was like ramming a mountain!" Goku shrieked out. "Not to mention that your stance doesn't impede you on the attack at all like I thought it would..."

"You're flattering me, I nearly dislocated my own shoulder too…" Chayote admitted with a slight smirk.

Their match had only just begun and here she was having a time of her life. It might have been, for all she knew, after this match, this tournament, she'd be off Earth, whether Son Goku comes with her or not. She'd be off to meet her fate in the stars, she'd prove herself to Lord Frieza and instructor Yuca yet.


	51. The Importance of Proper Positioning

"Alright, you've shown your new technique, it's time I show you mine!" Goku straightened his stance out and pumped his clenched fists by his hips. Chayote's body twitched as she had almost surrendered to the instinct to attack her opponent as he opened up. The sudden escalation in Ki which transpired in Goku's system convinced her not to.

Lightning crackled down from top to bottom of Goku's body. Chayote maintained her defensive fighting stance in anticipation of Goku's technique. As more and more seconds passed, the green and yellow jolts of lightning passing up and down the boy's body began to amp up in intensity and, likely, in voltage too.

"N-No way!" Muten Roshi quaked in his boots.

"What's the matter, did they see you hanging around in the contestant area?" Krillin squinted at the old man.

"This technique… He cannot possibly be able to use it, then again… Maybe Son Gohan picked it up after a while…" Roshi stared at a blank point in space while sweat broke through on his face. "Either way, to think that he would teach his grandson that! Didn't he know how reckless Son Goku was!?"

"Huh? What is this technique?" Yamcha wondered, even Tenshinhan found his sights wandering onto Muten Roshi as he described this fearsome technique.

"It's a deadly maneuver that is easily capable of deciding most battles. Because of how dangerous and lethal it is, I don't like to use it that often…" Muten Roshi explained. "Even if I ever wanted to defeat someone as skilled as Son Gohan, I would only need to use this technique once!"

"Wow! Goku's grandpa taught him that? Then again, he is using it against Chayote, if anyone can survive it, it's her…" Krillin pointed out.

"Bankoku Bikkuri Sho!" Goku extended both his palms outward, unleashing a cracking lightning blast that traveled in the shape of a wide electrical field which connected to the user via a concentrated beam of lightning energy.

Chayote jumped up to where she thought she was high enough. It was foolish for Goku to attack her with actual electricity, at least without any prior setup for the move. He should have known that lightning posed little of a challenge in terms of speed. The jolts of Bankoku Bikkuri Sho passed through the area where Chayote stood previously and then dissolved just a few steps from the nearest audience member who was beginning to feel a bit uneasy.

"Heh, got you now!" Goku smirked and winded up his fist, taking it to the skies himself.

"What? That technique was the setup?" Chayote grunted. He got her, in the air she couldn't quite maintain her defensive martial arts stance, at least she shouldn't have been able to. By simply stopping herself in mid-air via the flight technique, Chayote could regain her footing by using the air itself as a proper footing. Goku threw what seemed like a hundred and twenty punches in one second and he found most of them hitting blocks while a few more missed their mark.

Chayote flipped over her head, delivering an overhead kick to Goku's head and sending him crashing down hard enough to further mess up the tiles of the ring. By now it looked like a devastated city after a round of brutal aerial raids. Goku sat up and returned to his feet, stroking his head while wincing in pain the entire time.

"You're holding back." Chayote landed in front of him. "This is about how much power you had back when you fought Raditz, there is no way that your power level stayed the same for three whole years."

"Heh, you've noticed…" Goku laughed out. "I guess you really did pick up the slack in martial arts. Alright, to be honest, I really was holding back a bit. Up until now I was fighting using my fun-strength, you see… Ever since I fought Raditz, I found myself unable to go all out against anyone so I'm fighting using the amount of power that seems the most fun."

"No way! He has to be bluffing!" Tenshinhan's jaw went open. He must have felt a false sense of security after he and his freak third eye managed to keep track of the two Saiyans duking it out. Finding out that even one's full, awakened and meditated self was just almost keeping up with both potential finalists pulled the rug from right out of his feet.

Goku placed his arms by his hit, a burst of Ki left his body, blasting upward in an intense shine of crystal-clear aura while his hair and his turtle gi rustled in the rushing air pressure. A crystalline shine passed through Goku's eyes too as his Ki just kept on rising, seemingly to no end. No. It had an end, he was quite ordinary, it was just that Chayote had adjusted her measurement scale to measure up Earthlings and Goku had far transcended his fake Earthling self he identified with.

"Alright, let's see what you've really got." Chayote raised her arms up and tried preparing for anything. A disturbing worry that Goku would leave her in the dust and totally blitz her couldn't stop bothering her but it was impossible. Still, even blocking all of his strikes before hurt as if she had taken them, with his current level of strength… Could Goku really push her to the edge of her abilities?

A rough and hairy whack shocked Chayote, it made her flinch and close her eyes. Goku had smacked her with his tail. His tail! He was playing with her and he still approached her sooner than she could react to his bottom nearly slamming into her face. The female Saiyan tried lowering her guard, a simple attempted read on her opponent's movements suggested that he'd gun for her abdomen and he did, it was just that Chayote was too slow again.

"Amazing! Simply spectacular! Contestant Goku had acquired a sort of second wind and is now striking back at Chayote! Danger! Contestant Chayote is approaching the edge of the ring!" the announcer simply roared out into his microphone. It didn't matter to the audience that they couldn't see Goku's hands move, that as far as they've seen him, his arms had completely disappeared because they couldn't register them move at all. Chayote knew they've perceived it that way because she perceived it similarly.

Just as Chayote opened her eyes back up and mustered up some sort of resolve to come back at the unstoppable little monster, Goku slid underneath her spread legs onto the other side, right by the edge of the ring and delivered an uppercut that sent her further toward the center of the ring. Everything whited out for a second, it was only once she felt the gentle yet chilly breeze brushing by her cheek and noticed the ethereal fluff of the clouds underneath her did Chayote realize she was up in the sky. Goku sent her flying past the clouds with a single uppercut!

The newly established underdog Saiyan stretched her limbs out and stopped her flight. Instead of diving back down, Chayote took a moment to clutch at her burning ribs and take a small breather to regain feeling in her numbed out jaw. Yes. This was the kind of power that would finally help her power up! The kind of power that could have driven her close to death. Leave it to the only Saiyan in this part of the galaxy to manage this.

"You pushed me back… Didn't want this fight to end by a ring out, I presume?" Chayote wondered after emerging from the clouds and landing right in front of Goku who looked aptly content with his performance.

"No. I knew you'd be expecting me to hit you from the front, try and ring you out so I knew you'd be ready for me attacking you this way. I don't want this to end at all, to be honest, seeing you take all of that makes me wonder if you've got what it takes to push back…" Goku shook his head. Smile not for a split-second leaving his face.

"I'm wondering about that myself…" Chayote changed her stance again, spreading her legs out while raising her arms up and bending them outward. A mixture between the Turtle School standard stance and the stance she and Devil Man developed. In a way, it was the best of each of the two ancient siblings. Baba wasn't one for hand-to-hand martial arts but Devil Man served as her proxy.

The pair flickered and sent a cascade of crashing shockwaves, splitting the tiles of the ring apart some more, leaving cracks that totally devastated and ripped them off of the layer of dirt underneath. The ring announcer wobbled on his feet but had to surrender to the washing away wave of air that sent him tumbling back and off of the ring. The spectators covered up their ears and braced, covering up their lower bodies underneath the protective walls separating the ring and the outside area from the spectator area.

"T-This is incredible, Ten-san! If he had used this power against me, I'd have been a goner," Chiaotzu broke a drop of sweat without breaking his featureless, doll-like expression.

"No. Your psychic powers made all the difference in your fight, they'd have bought you enough time for a few good shots." Tenshinhan comforted his friend. He was only half-lying. He knew the pain a martial artist felt when they found out that their proudest bout was against a handicapped opponent far beyond their capabilities, someone they had no right sharing a ring with and while Chiaotzu was not entirely in such a situation with Goku, it was his psychic powers and not his martial arts that brought him to that level.

"I'd have lost still…" Chiaotzu mumbled.

"It's because you're still green. You make mistakes in the middle of the fight and squander your advantages. We'll work on that after the tournament together, Chiaotzu." Tenshinhan smirked at the little ghoulish fighter before turning his eyes back at possibly the most illuminating match he would ever witness in his entire life.

Chayote's knee dug into Goku's back, finally, her hit broke through Goku's iron-bar body and bent his back out, exposing his front for a good ax-handle slam that sent him crashing and bouncing back down. Goku's body rebounded off of the busted ring and headed for a ring out before Chayote flickered right behind it and sent it rolling to the other side with a stiff football kick to his side.

"Y-You saved me now…" Goku wiped his bruised face off of the dirt that he had gathered and the sweat that he'd worked up fighting Chayote.

"Nonsense, you'd have used some outlandish technique to keep yourself from ringing out." Chayote dismissed the idea. "I saw a chance to kick you for free while your attention was focused on staying in the fight and I took it. I guess my full power is enough to keep up with you, at least."

"Guess so…" Goku stood up and took his wide open, hands down and legs spread at shoulder-width stance from after he trained with Korin. Was his body at such poor shape that he couldn't raise his hands up or did he see some other benefits in this flawed stance?

"Alright, here comes my strongest technique!" Chayote smirked and wound up her right hand by her hip, almost like she was preparing to unleash a one-handed Kamehameha but her palm was clenched up into a fist. She would have to adapt it a little bit, if she used it as is, she'd send Goku flying far off to the Papaya Island and then have it detonate there, it would blow off the whole southern chunk of the world if she didn't care about proper Ki control or at least the whole Papaya Island, if she channeled it right.

"Bring it!" Goku smacked his chest with his palms without breaking his madman stance.

"Is he trying to get himself beat up? What a fool…" Chayote thought to herself. "Tournament fights aren't very good for trying to drive yourself to the edge for a Zenkai power-up."

Her body flew forward straight like a speeding javelin. Instead of throwing her right fist which she had winded up, Chayote slid across the ground with a kick that should have tripped her opponent up. One half that led to this choice was because Goku knew she'd come for his front, for his core, that was why he took this stance and that's where all of his Ki would be focused on. A good hit at open shins might have broken his legs outright but that wasn't what Chayote was looking for either.

Goku's image flickered and dispersed. Just an afterimage! That was why he taunted her like that by leaving himself wide open because he intended to use the Afterimage Technique no matter what Chayote threw at him and she got hooked on it like a complete newbie!

"Not gonna get away like that!" Chayote yelled out and threw her right fist with a punch that only hit thin air. After the punch concluded, her palm open to unleash all of the Ki she held pent up inside that right cross into a singular beam that would be nowhere near as effective as Lima Spear would have been if delivered point-blank but it would have had to do.

"Kamehameha!" Goku yelled out, thrusting his hands out and discharging an emergency Kamehameha that could not have carried the same amount of Ki that a properly charged Kamehameha would have but the fact that he generated one in an emergency scenario on the fly and generated it all at once was a feat of itself. Chayote's violet Ki blast clashed and struggled against Goku's Kamehameha, each one taking an inch over the other before being pushed back an inch back.

"Mine's stronger!" Goku roared as he pushed his hands into the blast, as if putting all of his own physical force to help his Kamehameha gobble up Chayote's Lima Spear and envelop her completely while the female Saiyan was on her knees and in too awkward of a position to be able to dodge the backlash of the beam struggle at all. Goku's feet were at just the right position, firmly on the ground and perfect for utilizing all of his otherworldly strength optimally whereas Chayote struggled from a compromised position.

* * *

"We really shouldn't be here, Chayote…" Omatto, an ever fearful little Saiyan boy cried out.

"What are you talking about, that's where they're holding all the training tools!" Chayote turned back at the boy who had a nasty tendency to piss her off with how aghast he always was at everything. For someone to be in her gang of two, he sure did second-guess every brilliant idea she had.

"Yeah but… Those pack some serious voltage! The warriors train with them in between trips, I bet they're not even calibrated to our measly power levels…" Omatto whimpered.

Omatto was such a dumbass. Sometimes Chayote wondered why she even hung out with him and took him to every cool place she wasn't meant to be in. Though whenever her intent of ditching the loser began digging into her sides, Chayote recalled that nobody else hung around with her and there was nobody else whom she could persuade to be her underling like she could do with Omatto.

"You'll get us killed, I'm telling Instructor Yuca!" Omatto clenched up and froze in place, digging his chin into his own chest as if attempting to harden up his entire, puny body.

"That's what you said when we took the pod-rail slide last time. Both of us are clearly still alive!" Chayote turned back at her underling who chose a really lousy time to grow a spine. She probably should have paid closer attention to the buttons she was mashing atop of the battle-bot interface but if Omatto ratted her out, ratting himself out in the process too but it never stopped him, she'd get in trouble again.

"I told you again and again that rail was meant for space pods, we collided with a space pod on our way down because of that! I spent two days inside of a healing tank." Omatto's whiny voice spread like a foul odor across the dark warehouse.

"Listen, how exactly are you supposed to get stronger if you don't train?" Chayote gestured in an inquisitive motion.

"Well… Why can't you just do Instructor Yuca's exercises that she gives you, you always run off or slack off doing them, why don't you start with the little stuff before transitioning to murder robots that hardened world conquerors use?" Omatto pulled on his hair. One of these days he'd lose it all, Chayote was certain. Even before reaching ten years of age the sides of his hair were already hanging awkwardly from all the pulling he's doing.

"That stuff's way too softcore! If we do the same stuff everyone's doing, we'll never get ahead of everyone else. We need to take a shortcut to catch up, then keep taking it, again and again, to show everyone that we can be as strong as the elites too!" Chayote clenched her fist out, her eyes burning with determination for imagined limitless strength she could already feel herself accumulating by having these battle-bots drive her to the brink of death over and over again until she was able to blow her class away, even Instructor Yuca herself, with a single punch.

Omatto laughed out like he had heard the most amazing joke he's ever heard in his entire life.

"Okay… Well… Maybe not as strong as the elites but… We can still be the strongest low-class warriors in history!" Chayote could see Omatto's fear faltering. He had Saiyan blood in him, as little and irrelevant of a part of him as it was, this would be how she'd get him.

"Oh, fine…" he sighed. "You'll get us both killed one day anyway, may as well hurry up and spare us the torment of regenerating from all the much better ideas you'll have in the future…"

By the time Chayote turned back to calibrate the battle-bot to a lower power level it was too late, the patterns over its body were lighting up and the light penetrated into Chayote's eyes like a pillow filled with needles sprouting into her face, rending her every pore and blinding her until there was nothing but the red light. And heat… So much heat…

* * *

"Contestant Chayote has been ringed out!" the announcer yelled out. "Amazing, Contestant Son Goku won the semi-finals match and proceeds to the finals!"

Chayote felt the damp but soft blades of grass passing through her fingers, she was laying down on the grass for a while now. The chill of the evening wind biting at her exposed skin through her tattered clothes was only the second testament that she was alive, the first one was the pain resonating through her muscles and the one granted by her injuries.

So she lost this time… Too bad, she'd have loved to leave Earth from a more solid position as its ultimate, undisputed champion of martial arts. Then again, maybe getting beaten by another Saiyan wasn't that bad?

* * *

_**Author's Note: Actually I had the fight between Chayote and Goku extending into the third chapter, entering a stage where both of them were winded and on their last legs and it'd have been just a brutal slobber-knocker for a whole chapter through, no techniques or fancy martial arts. The ending would have been the same though but... I kind of wanted to fight off my worse urges. I've always loved chapters that lasted well past their welcome and so I've always written them going into anywhere from two to five chapters and while I am fully aware that's not an attribute of a great writer, I just really love long and excessive fights (hence why I'm writing a Dragon Ball fanfic, I guess :D). **_

_**I'll do my best not to give in to my worst urges, I can't make any more concrete promises than this but... I can promise to at least try :)**_


	52. The Final Stretch

"You okay?" Goku leaned over Chayote, extending his hand. His face covered with a rich smile. He had every reason to feel proud of himself, for the first time ever he genuinely beat her. No trickery or external forces at play, sure, he won through ring out but he won nevertheless.

Accepting Goku's help, Chayote rose on her feet and then massaged her aching muscles. She took a nasty bump there, not quite being brought close to death level but she'd likely experience a slight boost in power after recovering still. Not to mention the invaluable experience of fighting Goku one on one, even when he was far weaker than Chayote it was always an experience to treasure.

"Yeah… Damn cat, didn't tell me that those visions of the future could have been changed," Chayote chuckled to herself.

"What are you on about?" Goku turned his head.

"Doesn't matter… It was a nice play, forcing me into an unfavorable position where I couldn't channel all of my Ki and where my body was strained in discomfort. Couldn't get a proper sense of balance, that's why I slid off of the ring so easily." Chayote commended her fellow Saiyan.

"Teehee," Goku just chuckled, showing her the two fingers raised up pumping hand sign. "Peace, peace…"

"After this brilliant bout concludes the semi-finals, we will have to take a short break again. Join us tomorrow morning in the repaired, pristine condition fighting ring for the resolution of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament!" the announcer closed the show for the day, despite the show taking just a few hours in total.

"Heh, got my ass beat…" Chayote smirked to Krillin and Yamcha as she and Goku passed Yamcha and Krillin.

"I don't think this is a lesson you would need committing to memory, it's one of those you've experienced over and over again on Earth, but you've now seen the cost of ignoring the fighting fundamentals. Son Goku was slightly stronger than you, yes, but not to the point where your victory was impossible. You lost because he tricked you into attacking him in an improper posture, without balance under your feet backing you up. He played your aggressiveness." Muten Roshi felt obliged to tutor Chayote but by this point, Chayote had learned to listen. The old man had some good things to say once in a while, she had to admit it.

"Hmph, now he will just have to watch out not to lose the same way tomorrow!" Tenshinhan declared, approaching the Turtle School gang. "I knew that with the two of you facing one another one would eliminate the other but somehow it still feels satisfying…"

"Still here to gloat?" Yamcha grit his teeth.

"No… I think I'm so satisfied because it was an amazing match. I've come here to apologize, actually." Tenshinhan extended both his hands to Chayote and Goku who just glared at each other in confusion.

"Rude apes!" Chayote pointed at the pair while exclaiming insults with a blank face, referring to the fact that neither of the two Saiyans had shaken hands with Tenshinhan after a brief pause to get to their grips.

"Stop it, Chiaotzu, I'm sure they're confused with this coming all of a sudden." Tenshinhan closed all of his eyes and then lowered his hands. "You see, when Baba first told me about you, I saw you two as monsters, grave offenders to the martial arts, posers who killed my master and made a mockery out of his lifetime of training and devotion to the craft. It had never even occurred to me that Taopaipai-san could have been in the wrong. That he might have been the one taking strength for granted and used it to oppress the weak, the very opposite of what martial arts had to accomplish. I don't think I would have had the strength to realize that if I didn't cut ties with the path Tsuru Sennin put us on."

Goku and Chayote raised their hands. With a gentle smirk, Tenshinhan raised his and the trio connected with a double handshake.

"I look forward to facing you tomorrow, Son Goku. It will be a monstrous match but I will not feel any dishonor in losing for you don't mock martial arts, you embrace it and raise to new heights. You're a young man after my own soul." Tenshinhan stared Goku down and then turned away, Chiaotzu mirrored his partner's actions, floating off by his side, never changing his face or showing emotion.

"Heh, I wish he didn't tease me like that! I'm getting all fired up here!" Goku punched his own palm. His tailed waggled about without his will demanding it from it.

"And to think that we used to resolve the entire tournament in one day, honestly, why do I even bother asking not to destroy the ring every time…" the announcer passed through the crew, wiping his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief.

* * *

"Kid!" a croaking voice alerted Chayote, someone of such low Ki signature wouldn't have tipped off her Ki sensory abilities anyway. Regardless of the unimpressive Ki signature, it would have been impossible for Chayote to not recognize the pointy hat, pink hair, and that ancient wrinkled face.

"Fortuneteller…" Chayote bowed her head in acknowledgment of the woman's presence. She then felt a weaker Ki signature outside, one that didn't elude Chayote's sensory range but one that felt oddly warm and familiar. "You can come out too, Upa."

A teen-aged boy with a much better defined muscular tonus to his body, donning a few dozens of different colored tattoos of varied mystical patterns all over his body and face paint over his scalp, wearing a pair of tomahawks the size matching the one of his own from three years ago, when he just started training in the mystical arts with Fortuneteller Baba.

"I'm surprised you stuck around. You're not an enthusiast of martial arts unless it brings you something out of it and you get to win a deal." Chayote teased the old crone. That wasn't entirely true, Baba was her brother's sister after all, though she most often chose to deny and ignore that side of her meaning that addressing her this way might have been the more correct choice if one wanted to get on the woman's good terms.

"Wanted to see my investment pay off. To Hell with that, I suppose…" Baba's lips formed an upper crescent of a wrinkled smile, showing off the gaps in between her teeth. "Though I am still curious about what you plan to do now… Where do the two of us stand from this point on? You've served me as a fine combatant, never once lost a fight and made me a lot of money, you know…"

"Maybe…" Chayote shrugged. "Either way, you promised me a fight with a martial arts prodigy worth the wait of three whole years. With that I'm satisfied, I've fought my prodigy so I've got no grievances with you. That being said, I've got no more business here on Earth, unless you've got something else to tempt me with. My spaceship is complete and I've settled all my matters here."

"Yes… It's funny how it turned out, wasn't it? Almost like someone knew the spaceship would be ready at this time…" Baba chuckled, looking far too full of herself. For all the concealed love for martial arts, she'd have made a poor martial artist because of that trait.

"So you're leaving then?" Upa stepped out from behind his mentor. "Off to space? Didn't you say that your home was really far away, that there's little to no hope for Saiyans to ever reach this place normally unless they're specifically looking for it?"

"That's right…" Chayote nodded. "Don't worry though, if things go wrong and I fail to change a few things, Saiyans very much will find this planet and not too long after."

"Oh? Picked up some fortune-telling tricks, have you?" Baba raised an eyebrow.

"No. It's what Kakarot saw in Korin's temple. I know now that those visions can still change so maybe Saiyans don't have to find this place. For that to happen, I need to convince Kakarot to come with me. I have a reason to believe that the one seeking this planet would be his father…" Chayote shrugged.

"Goku's father?" Upa exclaimed.

"Hmmm… You've grown to be quite the worrywart for this rocky little planet of ours. I have a feeling I should be quite proud…" Baba smirked.

"Anyway, I'm sure that Kakarot won't go anywhere until he settles matters with Tenshinhan. I will wait until then to ask him if he refuses… I don't think I have the strength to force him to go anymore." Chayote looked up into the blue sky.

"Well then, maybe we should stick around some more. This final match promises to be an intriguing one. Perhaps I did bet my chips on the wrong prodigy after all." Baba acted like an old, crooked crone again but it was just the way she teased people to get under their skin.

"Chayote!" Upa yelled out. "Will you really never ever come back, once you leave?"

"For your sake, you better hope I don't," Chayote sighed. "If things go as planned, I will become a soldier for the Frieza Army. Soldiers of the Frieza Army do not set foot on planets they don't plan to claim for Lord Frieza."

"He sounds like a terrible guy! You're better than to serve him!" Upa protested. Somehow Chayote knew that Upa wouldn't be a fan of the Lordship. Lord Frieza did stand for everything Upa hated, his tribe lived to protect the freedom of a piece of land whereas Frieza claimed it under his rule wherever his ambition spread. The two were polar opposites in terms of values.

"It's true that long ago I did rely on your ability to tell good from evil, but it doesn't really matter if Lord Frieza is good or evil. No. Frankly, I'd rather not even know. Serving him is the only purpose I've ever known, the only reason I was raised for and cared for," Chayote explained. "I don't care if it's good or evil, I am his servant, that's why I was brought up."

"That's nonsense! People don't need reasons to live, living is enough reason on its own!" Upa pouted his face. Underneath all that war paint, he really still was just a bothersome brat Chayote met back by Korin Tower. With a serene expression the Saiyan approached the boy and leaned over to him, there was still a fair distance to lean in on.

"You're a good kid, Upa. This time I will be the one making that call," she pecked on Upa's forehead before smiling and walking away in a rush, she didn't want Upa to see Chayote's eyes getting wetter and hesitation taking seeds in her chest, burrowing deeper into her abdomen with those detestable roots that made one's gut churn.

* * *

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the final day of the World Martial Arts Tournament has dawned! On this day, the finals of this magnificent tournament will be taking place! We've already seen some spectacular matches up to now but I have a feeling that this one will top all of them. Yes, indeed, this one's gonna be one of those one of a kind matches!" the announcer did his thing. Recalling that she had intended taking him along on her trip home because he was just that good at what he did invited a smirk onto Chayote's face.

It was a sunny and happy day to conclude the greatest martial arts extravaganza in recorded history. Usually, in stories that Bora used to tell them by the fire, the weather was used to set the tone and the mood that every character in his story felt deep down. People died on rainy days, people proclaimed love and got married on sunny ones. Yet somehow Chayote ended up feeling rather somber in a very melancholic kind of way on possibly the nicest looking days in recent memory, then again, she did spend most of her time training and fighting for Baba in the Devil's Toilet the last three years so maybe she'd just forgotten what nice days looked like?

"On our right, we have contestant Tenshinhan, who traded blows and proved himself superior to his rival from the Turtle School – contestant Yamcha in the quarter-finals and who matched the infinite bag of tricks of the old sage - Jackie Chun in the semi-finals!" the announcer turned to the right while Tenshinhan walked out from the spectator's area and took his place on the right side of the ring.

The three-eyed wonder had taken the time to meditate and draw out every last bit of his latent power, that much Chayote had noticed. He wasn't that much stronger than the last time she had sensed his Ki signature but he felt somehow more polished, more streamlined. Perhaps it would have been unreasonable to expect that a human, if Tenshinhan was, in fact, one, became suddenly an entire world stronger in just one evening but he certainly became his most perfect self yet.

"On our left, takes his place contestant Son Goku, who bested contestant Chiaotzu in what might possibly a contender of the match of the entire tournament yet in the quarter-finals and who, in a shocking development, surpassed and ringed out the last tournament's champion – Chayote in the semi-finals!" the announcer turned to the left while Goku walked out with excitement gleaming off of his face the whole way through. Without taking any time or following up on the strenuous stretching routine he engaged himself in in the spectators' area leading up to the match, Goku took his fighting stance.

"Huh… Muten Roshi-sama, why are you wearing Jackie Chun's uniform?" Krillin turned to Muten Roshi who was by his side in the spectators' area and donned a black uniform almost identical to that which Jackie Chun wore, had it not been for his bald head and sunglasses, the two would be almost inseparable from one another.

"Shut up!" Muten Roshi shook his fist over Krillin's head. "That's why you've never made it to the finals in these tournaments because you focus on meaningless details!"

"S-Sorry…" Krillin poked his fingers before returning his focus back on the match that was about to begin. Given how it was the final match, the tournament staff was taking their sweet time, as per Earthling tradition.

"This match, Tenshinhan might not be a match for Son Goku in power, speed, and toughness, but he more dwarfs Goku in technique and martial arts prowess, this match may just be one you feel privileged to see once in your lifetime…" Muten Roshi cemented his thoughts just before the gong tolled and the match officially began.

Goku's image flickered and disappeared completely. Unlike earlier when he employed this illusory fighting style, there were not even foot taps on the ground where he kicked his body off from, for all Chayote could tell without referring to her Ki sensory abilities for back-up – Son Goku had truly disappeared from existence when he attacked or defended this way.

"You can't fool my third eye, Goku!" Tenshinhan grunted while throwing a back elbow strike with his left and raising his right arm to block an incoming hit to his face. It was not until his right palm felt far too light after taking a hit of such magnitude that Tenshinhan followed the disappearance of Goku's afterimage. The Saiyan boy was quick on his feet to rush in from down below and throw a straight right into Tenshinhan's gut.

The crushing blow almost put Goku's punch right through Tenshinhan, flexing and bending the flesh around the punch to degrees to which the human body was not meant to be bent in. The brute force of the impact made all three of Tenshinhan's eyes pop out while Goku jumped back and let his compromised opponent collapse onto the ground.

"Oh! What a lightning-pace start of the final match! With one blow, contestant Goku decided to settle things and he sent contestant Tenshinhan down, I repeat, contestant Tenshinhan is down!" the announcer yelled out and prepared to start the count. Before he could get to one even, Tenshinhan rose from his downed position onto his knees which forced the announcer to stop his count.

"You're strong… But not… That strong…" Tenshinhan wheezed while black bags formed under his eyes from the strain that standing back up after a hit like that put on him. Physically, this really was a mismatch. Chayote almost felt curious to see what sort of strategies and techniques Tenshinhan would employ to overcome such an immense difference in power level.

"Heh, I guess not…" Son Goku smiled. Despite failing to put down his opponent with a strike he put considerable strength into, one that was so demanding in terms of wallop that it packed and the balance it demanded out of the deliverer that Goku immediately backed up after punching once to re-establish his stance and regain his sense of balance, he looked excited more than anything else.

"Three-Pronged Spear!" Tenshinhan exclaimed while calming his breath and switching his stance with gentle, controlled and flowing movements of his arms. He raised one of his knees up while crossing both his arms in front of him with the palms stiffened and extended into the chopping position.

Tenshinhan charged forward fast as a bolt of lightning, Goku vaulted upward and slammed a cross-chop of his own aimed at the sides of Tenshinhan's neck but his arms only dug through thin air. Goku landed on his feet and struggled to regain his proper fighting stance before a flurry of images of Tenshinhan danced in up in his face. Tenshinhan's afterimages appeared to act differently from how Son Goku or anyone else had used them.

The images of the three-eyed warrior flickered in and out, as fast to dissipate as they were to form and there was a whole motherlode of them all over the ring. They were transparent, easy to see through but seeing through dozens of fakes didn't make the real one any more apparent. Goku's eyes struggled to keep up with all the fakes flickering in and out but their struggle ended prematurely once Tenshinhan's knee dug into the front of his face, downing the monstrous boy in return for the previous injury Tenshinhan had suffered.

"Hmph… You're lucky your stature is so short, you only took the other end of my spear and it did not clip your throat whatsoever," Tenshinhan taunted his downed opponent who growled and grunted on the ring floor. Before Goku could get back on his feet and rush after him, Tenshinhan put some distance in between the pair.

And so the final match of the 22nd Budokai Tenkaichi had begun. It started with both key players trading stiff and merciless blows right from the get-go but as was natural for such brutal encounters where no quarters were offered – something somewhere had to give.


	53. No Shade Ex Machina?

"It's safe to say that this match has opened up, ladies and gentlemen, and, so far, contestant Son Goku seems to be having an advantage. Contestant Tenshinhan isn't used to fighting from the position of an underdog, let's see how he will adapt to this new assignment of roles! This is so exciting that I can barely breathe!" the announcer yelled out into his microphone while striking some poses himself. Granted, his made him look exactly how he was – twitching and working through the tension that speaking from the very bottom of his lungs caused.

"Prepare yourself, Son Goku!" Tenshinhan tightened his stance, telegraphing his next attack.

"Come!" Goku followed the example of his opponent with a smirk enriching his face. He saw it as incredibly cocky to flaunt oneself in such a way and declare one's next attack when one was being pushed and one's opponent demanded more than one was capable of giving.

Tenshinhan's image flickered and disappeared from view, only the adept martial artists could have been capable of following him. Some more talented observers might have been able to pick up small signs of Tenshinhan's movements without being able to perceive his actual position or where he was going. There were possibly five or six people in the vicinity capable of tracking Tenshinhan at that moment.

"Soccer Kick!" Tenshinhan yelled out while charging at Goku after a few deceptive feints. Dashing across every corner of the ring once or twice and then taking it to the enemy with all the built-up momentum. Chayote noted how Tenshinhan's position was surprisingly upright. Normally a martial artist would have bent their body forward at least a bit when rushing at such a speed to gain some aerodynamic features.

"Block!" Tenshinhan declared while throwing his left leg out with a knee strike while his body prepared to guard, leaning back as if his arms and the entire upper body weren't allowed to as much as touch Goku.

The Saiyan raised his arms up, putting up a competent block but Tenshinhan packed a decent wallop, pushing Goku on his back foot and breaking his block, despite scoring no decisive hits on the young Saiyan.

"Raise!" Tenshinhan chanted while delivering an unorthodox kick from the standing position the moment his feet touched the ground. Goku yelled out in pain as the kick nicked him in the chin and sent him flying upward. Tenshinhan vaulted backward, flipping at superhuman speeds. His body raised sufficient gust to bend punier trees in the distance and even the audience had to clutch to something and dig their feet into the ground to stay rooted.

The three-eyed combatant raised up his hands and took aim at the plummeting Saiyan. Tenshinhan then fired himself off in a mad dash. One that appeared to be more suited for a jog or a sports run rather than a head-on attack of one's opponent in any martial arts engagement.

"Pass!" Tenshinhan concluded his technique, throwing a stiff kick that he meant to send Goku flying far outside the ring and into the small town built on Papaya. Goku managed to regain his composure and roll himself up into a cannonball, rolling in mid-air before using all the pent up rotary momentum to deliver a butterfly-style hand block which he swiped from Chayote's arsenal, crossing his arms while opening his palms just like she did to great effect.

As expected of a defensive fighting style devised by two World Martial Arts Tournament champions and a Saiyan prodigy who bested both of them and took the fruit of their training, Goku's padded block absorbed the strength of Tenshinhan's kick, letting Goku land firmly both feet onto the ring tiles with hands pulsing red. The aching must have been something if Goku started blowing at them as hard as he did.

"Don't let your guard down!" Tenshinhan scolded his opponent as his image faded in hi-speed movement and appeared right behind Goku, delivering a stiff elbow strike to the back of Goku's neck.

"Oh!" the announcer chanted, "This is a highly lethal maneuver, employed by many of the world's deadliest assassins and a fundamental part of any assassination-style martial art! Who knew contestant Tenshinhan adapted moves like that!?"

"Stop joking around, as if I'd use a deadly hit like that if I wasn't absolutely sure this kid could take it…" Tenshinhan scowled at the implication before gifting the announcer with a cold shower using nothing but his sharp three-eyed glare. "You can begin the count though…"

"Ah, yes… One, two!" the announcer began raising fingers over his head.

"Hmph… I'm impressed Kakarot isn't up by now." Chayote noted.

"I thought you'd be disappointed?" Krillin looked at the female Saiyan.

"Maybe if I was talking about Kakarot I would be, so far, Tenshinhan has done wonders compensating the massive difference in power and speed with sheer discipline and one-of-a-kind talent." Chayote frowned at the pint-sized baldy after he didn't get her point.

"I see training with my sister has turned you into quite the martial arts connoisseur yourself… Impressive, I will need to ask Baba how she did it." Muten Roshi looked at Chayote before nodding in agreement with her assessment. "Indeed, Goku might not have faced an opponent whose talent in martial arts matches if not surpasses his own."

"Two… Three!" the announcer kept on counting while Goku didn't as much as twitch, continuing to lay in the embarrassing sprawl as if he was but a squashed insect on a windshield.

"Stronger or weaker, Goku would be lucky to shrug off a hit like that without lasting consequences." Muten Roshi admitted, examining Tenshinhan who made sure to use a couple of seconds in the moment of levity to catch his own breath and recover from the cold shower in the early stages of the match.

"Four!" the announcer raised a hand with four fingers but Goku was back on his feet by then, looking at his fingers with a curious glare as he flexed them and then proceeded to do some warm-up stretches.

"What sort of technique was that? All my limbs feel weird…" Goku mumbled in a whiny tone.

"I'm not sure if I should laugh or be petrified…" Tenshinhan smiled and returned to a fighting stance, taking his own advice from before he sent Goku into the knockdown. "For someone to survive a full-power strike straight to the Heaven's Pillar of the neck. I'd question your humanity if I didn't know for a fact you're not human."

"Heh, that's right, serves you right, having to deal with Goku's Saiyan toughness!" Yamcha cheered on Goku, deserving a wayward stare from Chayote from the side.

"You think Kakarot's display has anything to do with his Saiyan anatomy? I am a Saiyan just like him, even more, I'm a low-class warrior just like him and yet he has a remarkable knack for mastering the art of combat that I simply don't, despite having every bit of his passion. To wipe it all under the table of Goku just being a Saiyan is to dismiss his talent and hard work as a martial artist."

"Ah… Well… I suppose so…" Yamcha scratched the back of his head, being reminded that while the strength of Goku's Ki had a thing or two to do with his Saiyan heritage, his skill in martial arts completely ignored Goku's genetic origins.

"Soccer Kick, huh?" Goku smirked, pressing his arms to his sides and clenching his fists, preparing for an attack. Tenshinhan couldn't help but grit his teeth at the lack of notable damage that his technique had caused as even though he did succeed at kicking Goku around some, there didn't appear to be a notable mark of the boy's body nor did his attack do anything to damage his burning passion for combat. "Time I showed you my own technique then!"

"That would be a welcome change of pace, imitating the techniques of others will bring you little success," Tenshinhan smirked, finding an opportunity to jab at his opponent verbally.

"Eight-Hundred Arms Fist!" Goku declared while throwing his hands out to the sides. Goku charged onward as if attacking Tenshinhan normally but then his arms blurred and disappeared from the sides of his body, all the way up to his shoulders. Only a blinding visage of detached fists floating all around in the air and storming Tenshinhan's defensive ramparts flashed.

Tenshinhan let out a mad battle-cry and breathed in, his arms moved slowly in a circle while his muscles hardened. It was more than just an augmentation of his body using his Ki. There seemed to be a whole protective bubble of the energy forming around Tenshinhan's body, like a transparent aura, just strong enough to brush off Goku's strikes completely. Knowing he stood no chance defending against Goku's attacks, Tenshinhan chose to stand and take it, using his Ki to protect him instead.

"H-He's just standing in place!?" Yamcha couldn't believe it. "I… I thought Goku was supposed to be stronger than Tenshinhan!"

"He would be if he didn't fool around!" Chayote grit her teeth in frustration. "I bet he came up with that "technique" just now, on the fly…"

"That is most likely to be the case, this is hopeless, Goku's having too much fun so he will try every silly idea that reaches his mind." Muten Roshi smiled with kindness to his stare unfit for a teacher who just saw his pupil goofing around.

"Still, what's that technique Tenshinhan's using?" Krillin smacked the side of his head, looking baffled.

"It is Kiai." Muten Roshi answered.

"Kiai?" the trio consisting of Yamcha, Krillin and Chayote looked at the ancient martial arts master.

"Yes, it is as simple as that, a fundamental exercise of martial arts which most fighters dismiss and meaningless taken and polished to perfection. Gods could level mountains with a shout alone, a man after their likeness, such as Tenshinhan has little trouble using a battle-cry to withstand a lackluster technique of his opponent." Muten Roshi explained. "This time Tenshinhan does seem to be using a more potent version than the one used against Yamcha, he must hold Goku, even when he's fooling around, at much higher regard…"

"Go figure!" Yamcha clenched his fist with an irked expression.

A smirk covered Tenshinhan's face, with slow, methodical twitches, his arms rose up and then bent all the way to where his fingers could point to the third eye on his forehead.

"Solar Fist!" Tenshinhan chanted out while a powerful flash of light hit Goku from a spitting distance. Knowing full-well what was waiting for her, Chayote covered her eyes the moment she saw Tenshinhan move in for the Solar Fist stance yet somehow her eyes still watered and itched. With a painful grunt, Chayote moved her arms away after a couple of blinks, anxious to see the result of Tenshinhan's counter-attack.

Unbelievable!

It was Tenshinhan who laid knocked out on the ring, slumped over as if he was hit so hard in the abdomen he just shut down on the spot. Both of his human eyes were whited out and his third eye had its pupil rolled upward, very nearly to complete obscurity.

"Oh my!" the announcer yelled out. "Contestant Tenshinhan used his blinding Solar Fist technique that only does not affect me, since I have been blessed by the excellent style choice of sunglasses, however, despite executing the move perfectly, it was contestant Tenshinhan himself that paid the price for it!"

The announcer stumbled his way onto the ring, awkwardly got back on his feet and ran up to Son Goku, putting a microphone in Goku's face.

"Could you please comment on how you beat contestant Tenshinhan, contestant Son Goku!?" the announcer yelled out in complete excitement, despite standing just a couple of feet from the young and rather confused Saiyan boy.

"Well, I tried overwhelming him with my Eight-Hundred Arms Technique that I just thought up after remembering this Chappa guy using it on me during the preliminaries. It didn't work though 'cause while I moved my arms fast enough for it to look like I was punching eight-hundred times, I guess my strength plummeted, huh?" Goku rubbed the back of his head and turned for the spectators' area where Chayote and Muten Roshi nodded. Muten Roshi was still scratching his eyes as after Jackie Chun's elimination he left his sunglasses somewhere and watched the rest of the tournament without them.

"Y-Yes, very impressive but… Could you please explain why the Solar Fist had no effect on you?" the announcer wondered, specifying his question and then moving the microphone all the way back in Goku's face.

"Oh… I noticed how it didn't work on Tenshinhan when he used it throughout the tournament so I thought that it won't work on the user themselves. When Tenshinhan tried using the Solar Fist, I just used it first, blinding him but saving myself…" Goku laughed out while he leaned back on his crossed hands behind his head.

"Will there be no end to him stealing techniques from other people?" Chayote grumbled with a clenched fist, wishing she stood right by that goofball so she could pound him in that insanely talented head of his.

"Well… I guess if Goku can execute someone else's technique like that, he has the right to reap the rewards of that…" Yamcha sighed, finally recovering from the effects of Goku's Solar Fist.

"Y-You are… Strong…" weak grumbles came from Tenshinhan's side while the downed martial artist writhed on the ground and began gathering strength to stand back up. "Insanely so… However, you're still green… So very green… You fool… You should have… Asked the announcer to count…"

"Oh yeah…" Goku laughed out. "Guess you lucked out, huh?"

"That's… No laughing matter… One of these days this careless nature… Might get you killed." Tenshinhan managed to pick himself back to where he kneeled on one knee and breathed heavily. The black bags around his eyes returned while the three-eyed warrior gathered his strength.

"Oh well, it's not like I want to end this too soon anyway, I want to see all of the techniques you know!" Goku pumped his fists by his side, looking more excited than Chayote had ever seen him. Much to her own bitterness, she had to admit, despite being far weaker than either her or Goku, Tenshinhan deserved to be here in the finals. Not only that, he provided more fun to Goku than she ever could have.

With Chayote and Goku clashing against one another it was always Chayote who was learning from Goku's superior experience and training that he's actually completed with most of his masters instead of running off chasing stuff he's seen in water pots. Tenshinhan was always the teacher in any encounter, he likely even showed Muten Roshi a few things in their clash, despite being the less experienced one in their match.

"Most fighters are strugglers." Tenshinhan picked himself up and straightened his back, standing on his own at last. "They struggle against every technique they encounter. The truly talented get to showcase their talent. A technique will only work against them once in their entire life unless it is used in creative new ways. You, Son Goku, you are beyond even talented. You take every technique into your arsenal though not because you wish to be the strongest. Because you can't help it. Because techniques and every manner of fighting there is excites you to the marrow of your bones. You truly are one of a kind…"

"Not every kind of fighting…" Goku smirked while taking his fighting stance. "I hate fighting dirty."

"I do not. Perhaps that is where I might find an advantage against you but… I just don't feel like fighting that way. Your stupidity is infectious, it seems." Tenshinhan smiled and took his pose.

The two fighters took off at the same time, unleashing a downpour of strikes at each other at the same time. Fading in and out, afterimages manifested and disappeared by hundreds, Tenshinhan stepped in from the right side, making it difficult for Goku to attack and defend from him using all of his body and in that way, he appeared to hold his own in a simple hand-to-hand exchange such as was booming in the ring. Tiles cracked and fired as if launched by a geyser that burst from below but it was all just resonating shockwaves of the mad exchange of strikes between the two.

Soon the ring could no longer contain them, the two took it to the skies but even up there Tenshinhan found a way to hold his own, using his flight technique to maneuver around whereas Goku was predictable in the moves he could execute after a high vault to the sky he used to launch himself off the ground. Despite all of that, Goku still didn't skip one strike, nor did Tenshinhan. And still, during the few moments that the two stopped fighting and showed themselves off to the audience, the two appeared to be donning bruises by the hundreds due to the damage they took while defending themselves from the relentless flurries of punches and kicks.

Both fighters took a dive back and then leaped at one another from the opposing ends of the ring, clashing midway and taking the moment to smirk at one another in excitement while their elbows slammed against one another. While Goku packed more force in his hit, Tenshinhan's body was honed to perfection and even if he did take more damage by this meaningless collision in the center, he didn't show that. The two bucks then separated and took it to the other opposing ends of the ring and collided again with their knees.

This time, however, Tenshinhan seemed a bit too slow on the draw. The combined damage he took must have worn him out as Goku managed to hook his neck with his tail and swing around, delivering a spinning kick to Tenshinhan's back from behind. Despite the impressive move and perseverance, Tenshinhan's body blurred and faded away, the expression of pain frozen in his mind.

The three-eyed combatant delivered a cross from right behind Goku, having caught his opponent completely open, at the moment where he could exploit his mistake. Goku's body blurred and faded away just like Tenshinhan's did. The three-eyed martial artist widened his eyes in shock and raced to look behind him where Goku was already in the middle of kicking him in the center of the spine. All he kicked was thin air as Tenshinhan's afterimage faded away. The two went on for a while, trading strikes and kicks that only ended up disrupting a mirage left in the air that emanated the endless heat of the action transpiring in the ring.

Tenshinhan flipped over his back instead of attacking Goku and continuing the ceaseless chain of afterimage attacks. With a cross chop, he finally cracked at something solid, forcing Goku to cry out in pain and collapse on both his knees. It was then that the worn and hazy Tenshinhan took it to the skies, desperate in his race to land from as high above as he could pull it off with a double foot stomp aimed right at the back of kneeling Son Goku.

The Turtle insignia on Goku's gi drew closer and closer while Tenshinhan was seeing nothing but red. The battle had entranced him and rightfully so. At last, Chayote noticed the same drive for fighting that all Saiyan felt in the eyes of a human who was put on the same level as them. With a sense of anticipation Chayote awaited to see if Tenshinhan would succeed stomping Goku into the ground or if Goku would recover in time.

She even caught herself short of breath herself a few times, despite not being the one out there throwing fists.

* * *

_**Author Note: In case you haven't noticed, Goku VS Tenshinhan in the 22nd Budokai Tenkaichi is one of my favorite Dragon Ball fights of all time. As the first thing of Dragon Ball I've ever seen in goddamn German, having not the faintest idea what was going on, I fell in love with Dragon Ball watching it and began that incredible trip that will last for the rest of my life. **_

_**It is for that reason that I chose to just say "f**k it" and go about writing it as long and overindulgent as I want it to be and I'm not even sorry!**_


	54. Photo Finish

"Count!" Tenshinhan turned to the announcer, having just recovered from his haze of battle. It was difficult to tell for sure what had caused his escalating breathing if it was his recently experienced warrior's madness or the physical strain that abusing the Afterimage technique in the way he had just used it left the user with.

"One! Two!" the announcer started the count. Dark clouds covered up the sun in the sky, obscuring the gleeful enjoyment that the universe itself has been absorbing from the match. These weren't storm clouds and not a drop of rain fell from them but, for a short moment, gloom took the ring over while the sun hid behind the cumuli.

"Three!" the announcer raised his finger up only to witness Goku peeling his face off the ring floor with a smirk and wiping a trace of blood off his lip with the back of his hand. A drop of blood, that was all the reward for Tenshinhan's efforts.

The cool façade that the three-eyed warrior donned most of the time had collapsed long ago, the bricks that comprised it laid barren and scattered all over the ring where Goku pushed him to his very limit while he was enjoying everything Tenshinhan threw at him thoroughly. This was the first time that Tenshinhan was in the ring with someone who enjoyed every bit of punishment he threw out just as much as he enjoyed his own response. Earthlings tended to not like taking as much as they enjoyed giving in a battle.

"Their breathing…" Chayote noted. It was a physical testament to what she sensed inside and read off of their Ki. Tenshinhan was breathing erratically, he was winded whereas Goku's chest was bloating and deflating in an irregular rhythm but a much subtler one – both fighters were tired but only one of them felt the sweet draw of collapse pulling them ever closer, caressing their cheeks and their chin while attracting them to lay down and take a breather.

"Tenshinhan has made a mistake in that last clash. He might just pay for it with this match now…" Muten Roshi observed, joining in on Chayote's assessment and agreeing with it.

* * *

Devil Man spiraled off into the sky, bouncing off of the roof of the Devil's Toilet and fell to the ground, coughing up blood and slobber onto the stone tongue. He straightened his back and took a fighting stance as a true demon would. A part of a demon's charm was always how they didn't buy nor sell any of the violence that the enemy was dishing out.

"I was wondering…" Chayote stared at her fist which she just used to fling her mentor away. "Kakarot has gained a great deal of power fighting his brother. He may just be stronger than me and there is a fair chance that even after these years of training I will not cover that gap. This isn't doing much for my overall power level anyway. How do I fight a stronger opponent?"

"You've learned from Muten Roshi and the God of the Korin Tower and you still don't know that? These are the fundamentals of martial arts!" Devil Man hissed.

"No, I get the whole use the enemy's strength against them schtick, it's just… What's the overall game plan here?" Chayote pouted.

"Wear them out. It will be the most difficult thing you've ever done. You are already on disadvantage against them – they have more energy, likely better stamina, they're faster and stronger than you. You would need to use every dirty trick in the book to make them waste that stamina. You do not close the gap, you let them waste it. Every fist you throw, every breath you draw in a battle is a debt paid. Even if the enemy starts with more resources than you, if you're wiser with your finances, if you take the hits you can afford to take if avoiding them would be more troublesome than taking them, you might just let the gap disappear." Devil Man explained.

* * *

"Heh, I might have gotten carried away there, Son Goku…" Tenshinhan smirked as well while breaking his stance and straightening out his back. The gloomy clouds went away, letting the sun out from their cage. "That can't be helped when one is fighting you, I suppose."

"So you're gonna give up?" Goku asked with some frustration behind his voice. He would not have liked that very much.

"No. I will just have to go to the end on the path that I have burrowed for myself." Tenshinhan declared as he gripped both of his hands together in an ax-handle hold.

"What does that mean?" Krillin looked to Muten Roshi.

"Tenshinhan decided to stop planning, stop trying to win and just fight to the end to the best of his abilities. No more strategy, no more attempts to lure out Goku's mistake because he made it first by using a bit too much power in that last exchange of Afterimages." Muten Roshi stated.

Tenshinhan's eyes burst open in a mad-like twisted squint shuffled in with a creepy smile to boot. The martial artist launched himself at Goku, just a hair's breadth away from the ring floor. Just a slight miscalculation might have caused him to scrape his own chest at the tiles of the ring at the speed he was dashing in. "Volleyball Fist!" he chanted out.

Goku hopped over Tenshinhan's hooked sweep using his right arm and delivered a kick to Tenshinhan's jaw. Using his tail, Goku tilted his body off the floor while all of his limbs stretched outward and his strengthened tail spun the boy's body like a living whirligig, delivering a blinding flurry of spinning kicks and backhands that Tenshinhan could only cover up from.

"Sports Combination Technique!" Tenshinhan grunted, still pushing through the pressure Goku was applying with his living whirligig rush attack. "Soccer!" he yelled out while his left leg shot out with a quick kick aimed at Goku's tail, tripping the boy up and making Goku float weightless for a moment, "Soccer!" Tenshinhan yelled out again while delivering a stiff high kick to Goku's gut, forcing the boy to shoot upward like a raised soccer ball.

With a blinding blitz, the three-eyed martial artist dashed right up to his airborne opponent. "Basketball!" he grunted short of breath while grabbing Goku's back with his hand and driving him down as the two plummeted to the ground. The ring cracked and the ground underneath it churned after the crushing impact of Goku slamming to it with Tenshinhan's assistance head-first from an altitude almost reaching the clouds.

"Count!" Tenshinhan turned to the announcer.

"One!" the announcer raised his hand but Goku was up before that hand could weigh down in preparation for the declaration of the number that came next.

Goku yelled out as he charged at Tenshinhan, knee forward, elbow bent by his front, charging sideways in a defensive stance that covered most possible counters all the while Goku's hand remained by his side, cocked back and ready to deliver a punishing strike if need be. Tenshinhan clashed elbows with the boy while the two engaged in an exchange of blows, genuinely looking like any of those blows could have knocked the other off their feet.

Then one connected, Tenshinhan stumbled back but with whited out eyes returned to the fray. Fists and feet were flying everywhere, blitzes and shockwaves that seemed almost blinding and ruffled hair and clothes in their passing.

Goku jumped back, reacting to a blow to his mid-section he skipped but with a battle cry, he leaped back with tenfold the fury that he struck with before. Tenshinhan spun out from the mad combination of limbs that the clash of the two had turned into, having received a stiff blow to his upper section that turned him round and round like a cyclone, with a much weaker cry the three-eyed warrior leaped back with a cross to Goku's jaw while taking one from Goku in return. The two stumbled back from one another, tripping and fumbling after the exchange of blows both of them had taken.

Tenshinhan's body and face were beginning to swell, due to the fact that the martial arts prodigy fought bare-chested, all the bruises and trauma he suffered laid bare for those spectating the match to witness. Goku had some dirt on his uniform and small traces of blood on his lip and by his elbow where it got cut open during Tenshinhan's basketball-mannered slam dunk of the boy but overall he looked like he could still go for three more fights like this. This was where the difference in power truly became clear, Tenshinhan was fighting for his life, pushing his body and pride to their very limit but to Goku, this was just a fun afternoon entertainment.

Perhaps the most fun one he has ever had though…

"Heh, this is insane! I never thought this would be so much fun!" Goku couldn't wipe the smile off his face while he swiped the blood off his lip, leaving himself with just one open wound. "You must know as many techniques as the old-timer!"

Tenshinhan clenched his hands by his sides and let out a frustrated cry of pain. No… This was something else, he was yelling from the tension that something was leaving on his body, some unexplainable strain that took him over whole. Was this another one of his techniques!?

"Yes, the Four-Witches Technique!" Chiaotzu exclaimed in excitement. "That should cover it!"

Two lumps of flesh rose from the back of Tenshinhan's back, looking like parasites burrowing underneath the man's flesh and growing ever-larger with time, threatening to burst through but these were no mere parasites – these were bones. Bones of newly forming limbs. Even Goku, who was enjoying this match to the fullest took a stumbling step backward, shaking in the surprise of what he was witnessing. Tenshinhan stood before him with four arms instead of the usual two.

"Th-Three eyes, four arms… Just what is this guy!?" Krillin's own lips waggled and quivered in similar respectful disgust of the freaky ability that Tenshinhan had shown.

Tenshinhan dashed at Goku who was too absorbed by the technique of his opponent to offer a defensive stance. Tenshinhan's four arms worked like a machinegun, firing and reloading in the span of milliseconds and offering Goku no quarter as they laid a siege on his bodily integrity. Goku's teen body got thrown about like a rag doll all over the ring.

Both pairs of Tenshinhan's arms locked in a ax-handle position and began slamming the boy from both sides, making him fly up and then slam back down with enough force to bounce off of the ring tiles while Tenshinhan's doubled number of arms didn't let go of the boy nor did it offer him any release to catch his breath or take a defensive stance and protect himself at all.

Goku cried out in pain as he'd never yelled out in this tournament. It was an almost pitiful expression of torment once both ax-handles of Tenshinhan's four-armed technique smashed Goku's mid-section in between them before grabbing the boy and driving him back-first into Tenshinhan's knee. Offensive-wise, Tenshinhan was working overtime and it showed, his entire body dyed in an unhealthy blush that threatened to flip into a deadly shade of pale at any point.

Tenshinhan reached all four of his arms out to wrap them around Goku to lock him up in a bearhug, hoping that any of his relentless strikes had busted Goku's ribs, making a bearhug an impossible and excruciating maneuver to apply in such a situation. And this whole time the three-eyed martial artist moved without hesitation, no forethought, he made these deviously lethal decisions through instinct and experience alone. Tenshinhan was everything Baba described and more…

Just as Chayote prepared herself to feel her heart sputter in discomfort from Goku's cries filling the air again, it was Tenshinhan who roared in pain while Goku's limbs locked around all four of his arms, using his arms and legs to lock the four in place while the boy applied intense pressure to them which forced Tenshinhan to wriggle about in anguish. Eventually, he did the only right choice he could have and withdrew his extra pair of arms to where they came, freeing up Goku's upper half and having the boy swinging like a pendulum. Before either of the two could exploit this opportunity of a temporary standstill, Goku kicked off of Tenshinhan's chest and rolled like a cannonball through mid-air before landing further away.

"Heh… I actually felt some of that, it really hurt. I'm amazed!" Goku commended Tenshinhan while stroking a painful bruise on his cheek with his right backhand and clutching at his aching ribs with his left hand.

Tenshinhan's eyes kept on switching from functional to drowsy while sweat and blood flowed on his forehead profusely. The entire body of the three-eyed combatant hung on a thread, it was impossible to tell just how this man stayed on both feet in the awkward degree of hunching that he stood in but it was self-evident that he may have collapsed at any moment there.

"I've gone as far as I'm going to go…" the bald finalist admitted. "It's time I go all-in."

"Huh?" Goku bent his side to the head like a curious puppy. "Are you saying you know even more techniques?"

"That's exactly right, just one more… I feel like I've got just enough Ki left for it too and it's my only chance to win." Tenshinhan nodded.

"Alright, bring it!" Goku took a fighting stance. He truly was a monster, despite all the effort Tenshinhan went through, Goku still looked like he had just heated himself up and like the real battle was just about to begin at this point.

Tenshinhan's feet separated from the ring floor as the finalist split into the skies like a speeding arrow. Goku could barely raise his head high enough to follow his opponent and he had to cup his hand by his forehead to be able to see Tenshinhan all the way up there in the afternoon sunset.

"Ten-san, don't do it!" Chiaotzu cried out, both Chayote and Muten Roshi directed their stares at the ghoulish youth. "Use my Barrage Dodonpa instead, if you have enough energy left for Kikoho, you should still be able to do it!"

It took a combination of telepathy and her awareness of the present to invade the communication of the pair like that, Muten Roshi appeared to be capable of invading the pair's telepathic communication without much trouble. He was more adept at using the technique so it was of little surprise anyway…

"The Kikoho!?" Muten Roshi whited out. The old man clenched his fists. "To think that Tenshinhan would resort to such means!"

"Huh? What's that technique?" Yamcha looked at Roshi with discomfort growing within his chest, the prospect of his rival possessing yet another fright-inducing technique he wasn't aware of didn't sit all too well with Yamcha, it seemed.

"It is a beam of energy utilizing breath control and the cultivation of one's own spirit energy. It is a beam of immense power, incomparable to the Kamehameha but in addition to being easily capable of annihilating the enemy, it also either kills the user outright or just shortens their lifespan." Muten Roshi declared with a solemn look on his face. "Damn that Tsuru Sen'nin… It was him who taught Tenshinhan the technique, without a doubt…"

"Do you know this technique?" Chayote wondered.

"It was a technique devised and polished by our mutual master – Mutaito. All of his pupils are able to use it." Muten Roshi nodded, looking not at all pleased with himself as he declared that.

"To think that Muten Roshi always had that in his back pocket, even in his fight against Tenshinhan and could have pulled it out at any time to avoid defeat but… Didn't…" Krillin mumbled. "It must be… Quite the technique in terms of what it costs you."

"My target is the ring!" Tenshinhan declared while homing in on the square, cracked and demolished construction that, miraculously, had managed to avoid complete devastation up to now. "You're an absolute monster but not even you might survive this so please dodge it, Goku!"

"Fine then, I'll put everything I've got into this too…" Goku declared and cupped his hands out in front of him. "Ka~! Me~!"

"Have you lost your mind!?" Muten Roshi jumped up and burst out of the spectator's area. "No matter how strong you are, the Kamehameha is unable to channel nearly as much of your Ki as the Kikoho, and that's before the Kikoho gets amplified with spirit cultivation! You will die!"

"Ha~! Me~!" Goku pulled his hands back to his side while an intense blue beam, firing rays of rotating white light through available spaces for it to escape and shimmer on the outside, sinking the entire battlefield in blinding white light.

"It's your grave! Kikoho!" Tenshinhan roared out from the bottom of his chest, unleashing every remaining ounce of his power while drawing power amplification from proper breath control that enhanced his Ki circulation, cultivating a great deal of his very life spirit in the process and forming a beam of unmatched power with an all-consuming beam of orange light that dyed the entire sky orange.

The two beams clashed in the middle. Splitting the earth bursting through with white light and the heavens that glowed orange while the two beams clashed and rotated around one another in a relative standstill with the Kamehameha losing ground again and again in a slow yet non-stop rate. Goku lowered his hands while the Kamehameha beam concluded and wrapped up together into a sphere that began losing ground to the superior technique at an escalating pace.

"Now, full power into this!" Goku declared, his voice almost drowned out by the absolute madness of two world-shaking beams sorting their place on the food chain with one another while Goku cocked his right hand back to his side and wrapped his left hand over it. "Rock-Paper-Scissors! Rock!"

Upon chanting out his thing, Goku took off with a rising uppercut, throwing his "Rock" into the midst of his Kamehameha and bursting through, disappearing into the void of rampaging orange destruction and slowly snuffing out the white and azure shimmer. With an overwhelming nova, the beams erupted into a blast that appeared to be at its most intense at just the area where Tenshinhan focused it on, despite having more than enough power to evaporate the entire island, everyone on it, then drill its way through the entire planet and leave through the other side.

That was the power of breath control and spirit cultivation.

A grave silence took over the ring, now but a miles-deep crater shaped like a perfect square, once the complete devastation concluded with nothing but a rain of ashes and incinerated debris raining from the sky. Neither Goku nor Tenshinhan was anywhere to be seen. The silence created an auditory illusion of a ghastly shriek in one's ears, an afterimage of the vociferous and contained apocalypse that the tournament grounds had just gone through.

The announcer shook his head, trying to pick up on any signs for him to report the end on.


	55. A Drastic Shift in Tone

"T-Ten-san, there he is!" Chiaotzu pointed at a blank point in the sky. His glee soon turned to fright when he noticed the important detail that the image of his friend was growing at a rapid pace and closing in on the ground quick.

"He's falling!" Yamcha stated the obvious.

"That's why we couldn't see him before – he must have gone down quite some distance by now…" Krillin wiped the sweat off his face as he glared at the sky, following Tenshinhan's downwards plummet with fear for the well-being of his own friend.

"Goku…" Muten Roshi grumbled, staring at the grisly remains of the climax of the battle between the two martial artists.

"As powerful as that Kikoho was, there is no way it would have killed Kakarot, especially not when he weakened it with his own Kamehameha but… Punching the blast was a dumbass move only he would think up of." Chayote said, selling herself on that without much trouble. These Earthlings simply had no idea how powerful Goku was at this point, to them he'd have been on a whole different world. If he felt like toying with the Kikoho, it was because he thought he could take it.

"Oh! After the final clash, contestant Son Goku is nowhere to be seen and contestant Tenshinhan is plummeting to the ground! I have it under good authority that amongst the spectators there are those that can fly, perhaps they should catch contestant Tenshinhan before…" the announcer turned to the spectators.

"No!" Chiaotzu objected. "The fight isn't over yet! If we assist Ten-san – he'll lose!"

"If he hits the ground at his current state, he'll die." Yamcha declared with bitterness in his voice. He was not overly fond of feeling worried about Tenshinhan's life.

"Ten-san contacted me through telepathy, he told me he's taking the opportunity to rest. He'll wake up from meditation and break his fall in time, I know he will!" Chiaotzu objected.

Krillin and Yamcha looked to Muten Roshi and Chayote. Muten Roshi stroke his beard, sweating in worry nobody thrice over a hundred years should be dealing with. The old man nodded, while Chayote didn't intercept any similar conversations, as a far superior telepath amongst the two, Roshi has, apparently, and Chayote trusted his call.

True to Chiaotzu's declaration, Tenshinhan bent his body, flexing every muscle in his body in perfect tonus so hard that his skin turned crimson for a second before transitioning to purple and pale. After a few breaths, the three-eyed combatant had returned to his normal skin color and regained full-awareness of his surroundings, looking down at the crater below that still fired off jolts of white energy lightning due to how much residual energy from the blast was still present down there.

"Goku…" a heavy sigh deflated Tenshinhan's chest.

"Shall… Shall I begin the count then?" the announcer's lower lip shook in waves, knowing full-well which outcome of this apocalyptic blast was the most likely.

"There is no use, anything my Kikoho touches, it destroys. Goku was mighty, his punch may have halted the blast for a time but… He's likely resting at the very bottom of that crater." Tenshinhan breathed out again and again.

"W-Well… Just for the sake of formality then… One! Two!" the ever-charismatic announcer began counting. "Three! Four! Five!"

"This… This is just… It's too cruel!" Krillin shook his head, Chayote noticed a couple of crystal glimmers in them, the Earthling was hiding his weakness which was the right call. He was anything but weak by the standards of this sub-par planet so appearing weak was the wrong look for him.

"Yeah… It's like he's counting down to Goku's death, or something…" Yamcha clenched a fist to his chest, outraged by his own helplessness in this situation.

"It's okay. It might even be for the better if he did die…" Chayote declared, forcing everyone to turn at her with horrified faces.

"Six! Seven!" the announcer continued his countdown to the end.

"How dare you!?" Krillin grabbed Chayote by the collar, pulling her down a bit. "Goku's just like you! How can you say that!?"

"You don't get it, Fortuneteller Baba gave me a Free Return Ticket. It lets somebody return back to life once, no questions asked." Chayote shrugged. She could feel Krillin's grip weakening, before long the flaps of her black coat rustled free in the midday breeze of the late spring.

"There's a thing like that…?" Krillin mumbled to himself in a state of shock, Muten Roshi stared at Chayote with a look that reminded of his constipated face which, sadly, most people that ever spent time on Kame Island got to know well.

"Sister gave you the Free Return Ticket!? Those don't get passed around often!" Roshi muttered.

"That's right, if I use it on Kakarot, he'll owe me one so he'll come with me to Planet Vegeta. It's a win-win really…" Chayote shrugged.

"It's ruthless to say so even if you can bring Goku back to life!" Yamcha scolded Chayote.

"Why?" Chayote looked back at him with childish confusion.

"Nine!" the announcer counted. His face was red and a couple of veins had been ravaging it from the tension that yelling as loud as he was left him with. If he raised his fingers once more, that would have been it.

"That's not nice! It's not what people say about other people!" Yamcha insisted.

"Te-!" the announcer raised his arm up before Tenshinhan stopped him.

"Wait!" the three-eyed martial artist stopped the announcer and looked up. The announcer fixed his shades and turned his eyes to the sky as well, the bystanders in the spectator area, as well as the audience, all looked up as well.

They spent a good handful of seconds staring up in the sky before a glittering star made their looks sharpen and focus on the point of focus. With an excited yell, Goku pierced the heavens on a mad skyfall and rushed straight at Tenshinhan, as if his fight hadn't stopped for a second.

"Why did he stop the count?" Yamcha smacked the wall to his right. "The announcer would have counted all the way to thirty by the time Goku would have appeared!"

"You dolt!" Chayote scolded the ex-desert bandit. "He's a martial artist. He lives for fights like this, why on Earth would he ever let it end this way, just before they settle things for good? Tenshinhan stopped the count the moment he sensed Goku up there."

"I'm comin' atcha!" Goku yelled out, his hands placed back by his sides and cocked back for a downpour of fists once he approaches closer to Tenshinhan but his opponent just took a defensive martial arts stance and prepared for Goku's approach, gently pushing himself back a few paces using his flying technique.

"I'm impressed you punched right through the Kikoho. Fortuneteller Baba was right, you two truly are monsters!" Tenshinhan smirked. "But even your luck has limits! You can't fly so if you miss me on your way down – it's over, Goku!"

"You're the one who's lucky! Lucky I missed you with my Rock, lucky for me, I still have Scissors and Paper!" Goku declared as his tail began spinning like the blades of a helicopter, slightly adjusting the position of his nosedive to hit Tenshinhan head-on. The pair of Goku's fingers took for Tenshinhan's eyes but the crafty martial artist blocked it by placing his palm in the space between his eyes, blocking the eye poke of Scissors.

"You're through! I'll wave to you on your way down!" Tenshinhan grinned.

"Now Paper!" Goku yelled out as he drove his palm right up into Tenshinhan's chest at blinding speed. Despite punching his way through a weakened Kikoho, the young Saiyan still retained enough strength to knock out his opponent with one palm strike to the center of his ribcage.

Weightless and with all three of his eyes whited out, Tenshinhan spiraled toward the decorated brick wall protecting the audience from debris and airborne martial artists flying at them from the stage. Goku, meanwhile, plummeted down to the crater, it would still be a good dozen of seconds before he would hit the ground because of that.

"It's over!" the announcer declared. Not too long after, the golden tail of the Kinto cloud alerted the audience that Kinto went down for the save, now that its owner was officially the victor of the tournament and the Strongest Under the Heavens.

For a moment, all hell broke loose as the audience rushed out and over their protective barriers, taking Tenshinhan up their arms and lifting him up and down a couple of times. While the moshpit raged on, the audience hit the big blocker of the jarring hole where the ring once was and was forced to calm down and get their collective senses back together. The imminent threat of falling to everybody's doom if they weren't careful made it a very reserved and clever end of a tournament celebration.

* * *

"We should split the money!" Goku handed the block of paper bills to Tenshinhan who had only recovered from his daze recently and still had trouble walking without the aid of Chiaotzu floating by his side and holding him up by his armpit. "Everybody's saying you stopped the count and that I might have lost if you didn't."

"Nonsense. I have no use for empty rewards I did not earn." Tenshinhan shook his head. "You're the real Strongest Under the Heavens now, if I took even a Zeni of that, it would feel dirty and would just annoy me."

"Hmph…" Goku pouted his lips, looking about as discontent as Tenshinhan described himself feeling if he handed him the money. "I don't feel like I deserve this money either! I'm not happy with this fight now that I know you've stopped the count."

"In that case, let's make sure to meet here in the finals three years from now and fight again…" Tenshinhan smiled and raised his hand up.

"Yeah!" Goku answered his opponent's fist bump.

"If you've got no use for this money, I have a proposition," Bulma approached the two and placed her hands over Goku's pile of money, letting the boy decide if he let go of the pile or kept hold of it after he heard her out. "I'm not sure if Chayote told you this but… I finished rebuilding her ship and she's leaving, right?"

Chayote blushed and looked down. She didn't want it to be this big business. It wasn't like she didn't intend on leaving at some point anyway. That was always the final destination so why is everyone acting so surprised and why is everyone letting it seem like this news ruined the celebration a bit.

"Y-Yeah… It might have taken Bulma three whole years to build my ship but… Now that I've seen Tenshinhan fight, I've no reason to stick around anymore. I'm off to Planet Vegeta." Chayote hid her hands inside her baggy sleeves.

"This is so sudden!" Krillin looked up. "I never got to thank you for leaving the Dark Kinto with me…"

"You did, you idiot, you said "thank you", I'm sure you did." Chayote shrugged.

"I didn't, I was so scared that I would just phase through it that I didn't think it was of any use to thank you for it. Then, when it took off, I was too worried about my own life but… Thank you, Chayote! You were really frightening when we met you but…" Krillin began tearing up again. For someone so strong, he really did tend to act all weak.

"Come on, Krillin, it's not like she won't visit now that she has a spaceship that can travel all throughout the universe, right?" Yamcha turned to Chayote who just shook her head, making everyone even more shocked.

"For your sake, you better hope I never set foot on this planet. If I do, it may just be as a soldier of the Frieza Army." Chayote declared.

"Could you, just for a moment, try to act like a person I'm suggesting throwing a goodbye party for?" Bulma placed her arms by her hips with an angry look, fired at Chayote.

"A party!?" Goku's face brightened.

"I'm… I'm afraid I might need to pass… As much as I wish to see Chayote off, I need to take a big, long break after this fight. My entire body can't move on its own without Chiaotzu's telekinetic help." Tenshinhan admitted.

"Oh, right…" Yamcha removed a sash tied to his belt and handed Tenshinhan a bean. "It's a Senzu. It will solve that problem. It won't fix your attitude or your face though…"

"I know that already – it hasn't fixed yours…" Tenshinhan smirked and took the bean off Yamcha's hands, popping it into his mouth and chewing it promptly.

"Ten-san…" Chiaotzu looked up at his friend, wondering how he was feeling but Tenshinhan lifted off the ground with his own flying technique and flexed his body hard enough to rip all the bandages tied to his waist, his previously busted ribs and around the middle of his arm.

"Well… In that case… How can we refuse?" Tenshinhan looked down at Chiaotzu with an ecstatic look and the little ghoul, taking in the boundless excitement of his friend, smiled and nodded himself. "Goku, don't you need a Senzu?" Tenshinhan looked at the young Saiyan.

"Nah, I'm just fine. Fighting you made me a bit sore and it cost me some strength to beat you for good but… I'd rather fill my belly with actual food!" Goku placed his arms by his sides and tapped his empty belly with his hands.

"I can see your point…" Tenshinhan looked down at his stomach, not feeling too hungry after just ingesting ten whole days-worth of food. Had he not been in the party for seeing Chayote off but for food, he'd have been disappointed with the aftereffect of the magical bean.

"So then I bring the fake stone I just drew a Turtle mark on with a marker back to Muten Roshi and guess what he does!? He throws the thing right at my head, without mercy too!" Krillin laughed out while standing up from his seat and acting out the described episode of his story as experienced by him.

"That's right, I did!" Muten Roshi nodded. "As if I can't tell the difference between something scribbled by me, someone with patience and mastery of calligraphy lasting a few centuries compared to a lazy brat who's got all the spunk and strength needed to pass my training but one who'd rather use all of that talent for devious tricks like that!"

"And then you took my real stone away once I found it in the woods. I think that was the only time we have fought for real, that's too bad!" Goku clapped at the corner of the table a bunch while enjoying seemingly a boundless supply of food that half a million Zeni could pay for. No matter how boundless the appetites of Goku and Chayote were due to their Saiyan physiology and how hard working the other Earthling martial artists were at matching their pace, the money lasted all the way to the very end like at the end of a wonderful fairy tale.

"What would even be the point right now?" Krillin chuckled. "You got so crazy strong that I've got leagues of catching up to do! How do you plan on catching up to him, Yamcha?"

"I… I'm just gonna hang out with Bulma for now. We've got some catching up to do after those years I've traveled with you and trained atop the Korin Tower." Yamcha turned to Bulma and let her wrap her hands around his neck and peck him on the cheek. Despite the lovely display of affection, before Yamcha explained his plans for the nearest future, Bulma grilled him with eyes that demanded a correct answer from him or else…

"I'm stuffed," Chayote lied. "I need to take a few breaths of fresh air, don't you, Kakarot?"

"Huh? Nah, I'd rather eat up!" Goku laughed out with a mouth filled with mushed food. Spices and grease still donning his cheeks.

"Goku! It's not nice to deny a girl who's asking you for a moment!" Bulma lifted a clenched fist over Goku's head, defying the laws of physics in how long a human arm could reach for. Judging from her facial expression, it seemed almost like it was her who was scorned.

"It isn't?" Goku wondered. "But if I leave…"

"Don't worry, we won't finish it all by ourselves and even if we do have our fill, there will be plenty of leftovers to pack up for the road." Tenshinhan nodded with a kind look on his face that Chayote wasn't sure she had ever seen on him. It appeared that going the distance against the two monsters he lived in fear of for the last three years has liberated him. Either that or meeting Muten Roshi and seeing his own true nature. The old man had that kind of effect on people.

"Huh… So we're just gonna breathe? You can breathe in there too…" Goku pouted shortly after following Chayote outside.

"I need you to come with me, Kakarot." Chayote said short and simple.

"What? That thing again?" Goku shook his head. "No way! I'm no Kakareek of whatever, I'm Son Goku and I've grown up on Earth! No matter who comes from the Saiyan planet, that's who I'll always be and if they mean trouble, I'll knock them flat!"

"That thing you've seen in the Korin's Tower, that's about your own father coming to take you back. I'm sure you heard Raditz claim that he'd come too. If he does come, he'll be pissed that you haven't killed all the Earthlings and prepared the planet for sale as it was intended to." Chayote tried reasoning with the unreasonable alien boy.

"So? I've beaten Raditz, I'll beat him too!" Goku declared. "I'll train long and hard, everyone will do their best, soon even Yamcha and Krillin will be strong enough to take on Raditz, even if Raditz's father comes down here, we'll knock him flat!"

There truly was just no point…

"Just so you know, those images of the future you've seen in the Korin Tower, they're not set in stone. When I climbed up there, I saw us fighting at the Martial Arts Tournament three years ago, I saw myself fighting Tenshinhan in the finals today and then I saw both of us taking on Kami in some airship of his. Only one of these things happened. You were the one to fight Tenshinhan and we will never kill Kami and take over this planet as I've foreseen." Chayote said. "That's why I wanted to try to get to you, move you away from Earth and change the future again, have your father follow us through space instead of coming here."

Chayote turned to Goku, startled by him knocking at her pack with an open palm.

"I was right when we first met, you really are a nice person! You just talk mean, but you were thinking about Earth this whole time. Earth's your home too, you should stay and we can fight Raditz's father together!" Goku suggested, flipping the tables on Chayote.

"What? No way… I've already postponed leaving when Baba suggested it, just because I wanted to meet Tenshinhan before leaving. Bulma finished the spaceship already, there's no use in postponing it any further. I've already spent so much time here, at this pace I'll never join the Frieza Army." Chayote felt a bit proud of being able to act as stubborn as Goku did with her suggestion.

"That Frieza guy… What's so special about him and his army?" Goku crossed his stubby, teen-arms over his chest.

"You don't get it. You've grown up on Earth." Chayote said. "Saiyans are a warrior race. Fighting and war are in our blood, it's our only drive. To be denied the honor of becoming a warrior in the strongest army in existence is the same as to say that one's life is worthless. I may be a low-class warrior, just like you, but I'll die fighting before I will settle for being worthless!"

"We had an army too, here on Earth, you've totaled it…" Goku squinted at Chayote before the pair started laughing. At that moment, staring at the evening stars, feeling the chilly breeze and hearing the buzz of pests around her ears while laughing from the bottom of her chest and reminiscing of past battles… Chayote felt the happiest she's ever been then and there, it was too bad that a ground-shaking feeling of a lightning bolt severed into two, followed up by a loud screech that snuffed out into silence brought her down to Earth.

"Something's wrong!" Chayote declared and leaped up. Her Ki worked alongside her like never before, carrying her through the skies toward the troublesome Ki that she sensed. A familiar Ki too! A familiar noise of the Kinto behind her suggested that Goku was resigned to follow her. That was good, he needed to see this and she may just need his help.

"Get Yamcha, we might need Senzu!" Chayote looked back and yelled but Goku didn't react, with a stern face he just followed her. Could he have felt something off too?

Chayote landed nearby the abandoned tournament grounds and ran inside the spectator's area where they waited for their turn to fight and watched the matches from. Inside, sprawled on the floor and covering up his head laid the tournament announcer, still shaking in his boots while just by his side laid Krillin, most of him, anyway. His entire torso had a hole in it that could have fit his own head.

Goku immediately ran up to him, Chayote saw the light reflecting off of the corners of his own eyes. This was no time to get weak, this was no time for shaky knees! The Saiyan approached a large lump of cloth that had the Turtle Gi all bent up and prepared, laid beside a massive mountain of food packed inside the clothes and ready for take-out.

"Th-Thank you…" the announcer mumbled, even with his microphone far away from his shaking mouth, his voice still slew the silence in the room as he meant it to.

"What?" Chayote turned back.

"That's what he wanted to do, he said he'd drag the whole thing to Capsule Corporation on his Dark Kinto and write you a thank you note. He said you'd know what for…" the announcer explained with a shaky voice.

"Krillin, Krillin!" Goku finally mustered up the strength to do something more resembling speech and less sounding like a whine. "Who did this!?"

"It… It was a monster. I found contestant Krillin here and… I think that the monster was following me from the main building as he attacked me. Contestant Krillin saved my life from him and was manhandling him but… That monster must have been the demon… He attacked me unexpectedly and… Contestant Krillin jumped in the way…" the announcer turned to Krillin's lifeless body with shaking hands that were the only support for his body. "I guess… In the end… It's him I need to thank after all…"

Goku stood up, his fists clenched by his sides and shaking as tears streamed down his cheeks. It was a rare sight for a Saiyan to show weakness but Son Goku was raised on Earth so he was more receptive to Earthling habits.

"Chayote…" he said.

"Yeah…" Chayote reached inside her pocket and pulled out a worn up ticket that was stapled together and had coffee stains all over it. "I'm cashing it in."

"Not that, can you sense that bastard!?" Goku yelled out.

"Yeah… Krillin must have done a real number on him, he isn't moving very fast." Chayote turned to the west where she sensed a devious Ki signature, she could tell it was the monster that killed Krillin, it was the only notable Ki signature in the area that Chayote couldn't recognize but also… It was evil. Not just evil, it was defined by its evil nature, as if it was given life to do evil deeds.

The rest of the crew ran up to the tournament grounds and simultaneously went through all stages of shock and panic that Chayote and Goku went through together all at once. Muten Roshi stepped in Goku's way but it was years too late for him to presume that Goku or Chayote could not leave him behind them if they meant to. Maybe the announcer was right, maybe Chayote and Goku were chasing a bona fide demon?

"Chayote…" Bulma muttered with a weak voice.

"My leave's postponed until we bring Krillin back to life." Chayote declared before taking off while Goku jumped onto the Kinto and followed not too far behind her. It wasn't that Chayote flew faster than a Kinto, it was just that he needed her to show him the direction of the monster that did Krillin in.

"I… I should have… Should have shown them this…" the announcer looked at a sheet of paper that he held crushed with his right arm, the one that the demon had dropped just before leaving, all sunken in salad-colored blood of the beast that dropped it. "Maybe it's important?"

Muten Roshi approached the announcer and slowly picked the crumbled piece of paper into his arms, unfolding it to observe its declaration only to freeze in fear. An absolute sense of dread that relaxed the muscles of his jaw while freezing the rest of his body in place.

"The Demon King Piccolo has returned…" he declared only audible to himself, just so that another center of his brain could fathom the horror he had experienced.


	56. A Plot to Kill All Martial Artists

"What is on that sheet of paper, Roshi-sama?" Tenshinhan inquired, approaching the old man who shook in disbelief while staring at the sheet of paper, eyes staring at a blank point of the paper where there weren't even any symbols to gander at.

"Unbelievable… For Demon King Piccolo to return now…" Muten Roshi muttered under his own nose, his hollow breath barely moved the hair of his facial hair. "You… What did the monster that killed Krillin look like?"

"Well… He was scary and… Green! Yes! He was very green, he had wings and sharp teeth. Otherwise, he was quite humanoid… I believe…" the announcer struggled his way through words, it was only because of the nature of his profession that he had the gall to remain as eloquent as he was in his state of panic.

"Hmmm… Sounds like one of Piccolo's spawns, without a doubt…" Muten Roshi stroke his beard. "We must act at once, in that case. Chayote and Son Goku are immensely powerful, they very well might take care of Demon King Piccolo together. However, we must collect the Dragon Balls just in case."

"I don't understand, Roshi-san, just who is this Demon King Piccolo?" Tenshinhan pressed on.

"He is a demonic bane from the past. A terrifying tyrant whose Evil Tribe has once taken over the world. Not even the combined forces of every martial artist on Earth could repel this scorn. It was Master Mutaito, master of martial arts who brought me and Tsuru Sen'nin up in the world of martial arts, who managed to seal the monster away. At the time that was the only way to save the world." Muten Roshi explained.

"But back then… We didn't have the Saiyans on our side, right?" Yamcha raised a fair point.

"True. The out of this world strength of Goku and Chayote might just be the biggest advantage on our side. The Mafuba, the sealing technique that sealed Demon King Piccolo away before, does not prevent one sealed away from aging or growing weary, with some luck, Demon King Piccolo will be at his weakest right after being released. However, with Demon King Piccolo, we cannot take any chances…" Muten Roshi insisted.

"I see…" the announcer stood up from the floor where he'd been groveling up until now. "So then why did he attack me? It seemed like I was the target of this spawn of Demon King Piccolo's…"

"That is odd indeed." Muten Roshi agreed. "As far as I know, neither of us had any Dragon Balls with us or any other valuable artifact."

"He took the list!" the announcer grabbed his hair and stroke it upward, letting his nerves get to him. "The list of competitors!"

"Ahh…" Muten Roshi tilted his shades. "I see… Well… In that case, we might truly have a chance. It is so unlike Demon King Piccolo to act in desperation and fear that I ruled such a possibility out from the get-go but…"

"Could you clear it up a little bit, Muten Roshi-sama?" Yamcha said.

"It appears that Demon King Piccolo is targeting martial artists. He is afraid that a martial artist would use the Mafuba on him again. He is so much unlike the scorn he once was, the Demon King of old would have invaded the world and took it by force the moment he manifested onto this world… What lowly state has he awakened in to scheme like this?" Muten Roshi explained. "Either way, we have no time to waste! You two, will you help us collect the Dragon Balls?"

"No." Tenshinhan shook his head. "I apologize, Roshi-sama, but I would instead confront Demon King Piccolo myself. I am not sure what these Dragon Balls are or what their purpose is but if the Demon King is targeting all martial artists, this is a matter of pride to me! I will not stand aside and let him rampage across the world nor will I mirror his behavior and scheme behind his back."

"Ten-san…" Chiaotzu floated higher up, almost to where he was level to Tenshinhan's determined expression to take the fight to Demon King Piccolo. The ghoulish shrimp looked conflicted between going with his lifelong friend and partner and saving the world the way it was meant to be saved.

"You might stand a chance." Muten Roshi grumbled. "However, you will not be facing just King Piccolo, you will be facing the entire might of his Evil Clan as well. Each one of them more than a challenge to the mightiest martial artists the Earth had to offer during the heyday of the old generation of martial artists. To challenge Piccolo head-on now is to commit suicide."

"You can take Chiaotzu, he is more than a match for any challenges you might face collecting those Dragon Balls. Even if Demon King's clan folk try to stop you, you would have Muten Roshi and Chiaotzu protecting the Dragon Team." Tenshinhan stood his ground. "Meanwhile, Piccolo Assassination Squad would be taking it to the Demon King and keeping him occupied while you collect the Dragon Balls."

"I see you've excluded Yamcha from the Dragon Team." Muten Roshi stroke his beard.

"Yes. He would be ample back-up if I ran into trouble. Don't forget that I drew blood from Son Goku himself, I will not give Demon King Piccolo an easy fight!" Tenshinhan insisted.

"Very well, only because Demon King Piccolo might try something that will jeopardize our quest for Dragon Balls and because Chiaotzu has taken part in the World Martial Arts Tournament and is, therefore, a target, you and Yamcha might challenge Demon King Piccolo. However, you must understand, the Dragon Balls are wish-granting orbs, but they can only grant you one wish. If we ask the Divine Dragon to destroy Demon King Piccolo, it will not be able to resurrect you within one year. This means that if you die fighting Demon King Piccolo and we use the Dragon Balls to destroy him for good – you cannot come back to life."

"That is a risk I am willing to take, for I am a martial artist and my pride demands I confront those who would disgrace or threaten martial arts!" Tenshinhan clenched his fist with a determined look on his face. A face that understood the gravity of his situation fully but who provided more gravity to the responsibility to challenge and overcome those threatening martial arts over his own well-being. "I will understand if you chicken out though…" he turned to Yamcha.

"Are you kidding me?" Yamcha clenched his fist and placed it by his chest. "If some Demon King is trying to kill all martial artists, he's basically asking for a beating!"

"So you would rather run off again and die rather than protect your girlfriend?" Bulma crossed her arms over her chest, looking displeased with Yamcha but not in the same way she's been displeased before. Her eyes weren't scorned or brimming with rage, they were terrified. She wasn't demanding that Yamcha followed her because of her selfish need to hog the poor dolt all to herself, she wanted him by her side because that's where Demon King Piccolo wouldn't be.

"Sorry, Bulma, I didn't expect or want this to happen but… Krillin's dead. If there's a chance that the Dragon Balls can be used to bring him back, that Tenshinhan and I can defeat Demon King Piccolo, we have to take it." Yamcha wrapped his arms around Bulma and pressed her to his chest.

"But how will we know if Yamcha and Tenshinhan succeeded?" Oolong raised a point. "Let's say we do collect the Dragon Balls and then we have to decide what to wish for, right?"

"No. We will wish for the destruction of Demon King Piccolo." Muten Roshi smirked, judging from his expression, he knew something the rest did not.

"What? But Roshi-sama, Yamcha and I can do it, that's even if Chayote and Son Goku would not have beaten Demon King Piccolo to a pulp by the time we get there!" Tenshinhan looked shocked that Muten Roshi thought so little of their chances to eliminate King Piccolo before the Dragon Balls were collected just after claiming it was possible to someone of their power.

"You don't understand, Chayote and Son Goku are not going to confront Demon King Piccolo. They have no idea where Demon King Piccolo even is. They're headed for Fortuneteller Baba's Palace to cash in the Free Return Ticket for Krillin and bring him back to life. That's after they destroy the Evil Tribe spawn that killed Krillin." Muten Roshi explained. "Chayote appears to be able to sense Ki, Ki as evil as that of Demon King Piccolo must stand out so she might know where the Demon King is though. If you run into them on the way, she can direct you toward his location."

"Bulma, I'll need a jet capsule." Yamcha pulled Bulma off his chest where she had her nails dug up deep into his gi, planning to hold him close and never let go. Since the genius inventor didn't respond, Yamcha reached in for the case in her pocket and pulled out a capsule, pocketing it himself before placing the case back where he'd found it.

"Chayote isn't an excellent flyer. I pale in comparison to her sheer strength and speed but I can beat her in speed of flight. We can still catch up to her, Yamcha, let's go," Tenshinhan asked Yamcha to go already. After nodding to everybody for farewells and then shaking hands with Puar, Yamcha split off of the group and ran off with Tenshinhan who had taken off into the sky already. Yamcha popped the capsule and sat inside the jet, going through the start-up process.

"The Fortuneteller Baba's palace is located in a large lake, surrounded by a desert north of Southwest Forest. The address is FS 199644 CC," Muten Roshi yelled at Yamcha who had almost blasted off without hearing out the directions.

* * *

"There he is." Chayote pointed ahead. "The announcer wasn't lying, Krillin did a real number on him, he's flying pretty slowly…"

Up ahead hovered a pathetic excuse for a demon, clutching over his busted ribs and covered with bruises, a long drool of blood hung from his bottom, fishy lip. The demon was of green skin and had a spiky mohawk formation over his head. Pointy ears and no teeth. No body hair to speak of and demonic wings that appeared similar to those of the Devil Man - a demon without a doubt.

"Shit, I've been followed?" the demon turned around, looking dumbstruck that somebody had managed to track him down. His eyes were gaping open to an unnatural degree, further displaying differences from normal, human anatomy. Still, the fact that this expression was one of panic brought pleasure within Chayote's heart.

"Were you the one that killed Krillin!?" Goku demanded to know. It was such a pointless question but the boy seemed to want to hear it from the demon himself. That might have been good for him, hearing the demon speak of Krillin in a lowly manner might have driven him into an even deeper fit of rage. Rage was Saiyan's natural, desired state. Only in such a state could his Saiyan instincts be awakened. Perhaps he'd finally see reason and return to Planet Vegeta with Chayote after raging about for a while?

"Krillin?" the demon wondered, he then ran his eyes across the sheet of papers that he held in his hand and identified a familiar face which he then cast aside, crushed in his sizable hand that donned pointy and dangerous claws. Now the huge hole in Krillin's abdomen made more sense… Still, for someone weaker than Krillin to kill him, he must have been using a technique of sorts that boosted his power level while he used it, not just attacked the baldy physically. "Oh, you mean this guy…"

"Well… Did you kill him or not!?" Goku ground his teeth and held his fists clutched tight by his sides, his muscles were as tense as they ever were and it appeared as if the boy's entire body was twitching with the force that passed through it every other moment in an involuntary twitch. "Because I'll kill you if you did!"

"It wasn't my fault. He committed a grave offense and laid his filthy, human hands on a demon, not just any demon, a spawn of the Demon King Piccolo himself – Tambourine!" the winged demon spread his hands out before quickly clutching his aching sides again. He really wasn't in the best state to do any of this… There would be no honor in putting this miserable fish-fiend out of his misery.

"Why you… You killed Krillin!" Goku roared out into the sky, letting out all of his steam. Before he could unleash all of his pent up rage, however, Tambourine let out a blast from his mouth, flying at Chayote.

"Ki-ki-ki! Let's see you fry sacrificing for your girl friend as your bald chum did for that useless human!" Tambourine taunted Goku as the blast hit Chayote head-on and detonated with a dulled explosion. Once the smoke cleared, Chayote stared back at the demon with a bemused expression, the attack had failed to even wipe all the dust off of her cloak.

W-What!?" Tambourine's jaw dropped. "You dare to not die after a demon of the Evil Tribe has blasted you!? Insolence!"

Goku let out a proud battle cry while leaping off of his Kinto and charging straight at the shocked demon spawn. The young Saiyan turned like a rotating drill in mid-air while charging head-on and delivered an overhead kick that cut through the body of the demon like a fine sword through a beaten steak. Split into two, Tambourine plummeted from the skies over a prairie near Southern Continent.

"I-Impossible… A mere human… Disposed of a demon…" Tambourine whimpered in a weak husk while falling, not moments later, his body lit up and blew up into bits. It was a curious feature of this brand of demons.

"He said something interesting." Chayote pat her shoulder as the blast that hit her managed to ruffle her baggy outfit a little bit and put it into an awkward position to hang, requiring some manual fixing. "This demon appears to have a King of sorts. We can kill him too if you want."

Right now Son Goku wasn't acting straight, not like his usual aloof behavior at all. He had just killed an already broken weakling in cold blood by attacking him without a hint of restraint. If Chayote could just nudge him to eradicate a whole race of these demons or at least leaving them kingless, then maybe he'd get a taste for those sorts of things and develop a craving?

"No. Let's bring Krillin back if you hadn't reconsidered…" Goku turned back to Chayote after the Kinto had moved down under him and caught him shortly after his attack on Tambourine. "Krillin's death has been avenged for now. We can flatten that Piccolo-guy later, together with Krillin."

"Alright." Chayote shrugged. It was worth a shot.

* * *

"Look, this signal on the radar. I think Bulma's outfitted this jet with a Dragon Radar. Hers must have one too… She's really been outfitting all of her gear with those things recently… I suppose with both Chayote and Goku running errands for her and looking for Dragon Balls, it can't be helped," Yamcha smirked. "Should we land and scoop it up? It's not too far from our current location…"

"Forget it. Our goal is to destroy Demon King Piccolo." Tenshinhan's telekinetic signal returned to Yamcha having overheard Yamcha speaking to him through a speaker on the jet he was flying. "The last thing we want to do is give him a free Dragon Ball in case we fail."

"Ah, I see, maybe that's smarter…" Yamcha gave in. "It seems to be moving. Somebody must have found it…"

"Don't worry, even if it is a Demon King Piccolo's spawn, Chiaotzu and Roshi-sama are more than enough. The announcer said that Krillin would have beaten one if it didn't trick him. That gives us an estimate of how strong those things are." Tenshinhan explained.

"So, at this point, we're just flying toward the Fortuneteller Baba's palace, hoping we'll bump into Chayote and Goku so that Chayote can tell us where King Piccolo is?" Yamcha wondered.

"Unless you have a better plan…" Tenshinhan said.

"No, let's keep on accelerating forward and hope that Chayote and Goku didn't get too far ahead of us." Yamcha shrugged.

"Stop!" Tenshinhan straightened his back out and halted in a split-instant once a rich formation of clouds split right in front of him, revealing a boat with wings that seemed to have been functioning as an airship and hovering in the sky just above the prairie where Yamcha had just picked up a Dragon Ball in. "Could this be?"

"Pilaf?" Yamcha read a logo on the side of the airship written with proud, man-sized white letters in a black background. "Don't worry, those guys are harmless, they're after the Dragon Balls, Son Goku and I have once ruined their plans for world domination."

"World domination is harmless?" Tenshinhan turned to the stationary jet Yamcha was in.

"With these guys going after it, it would be." Yamcha waved his hand at the giant airship as if it was just a lumbering joke in their path. "I guess it wouldn't hurt taking these guys down so that they don't get in Dragon Team's way."

With a mechanical noise, the wooden lid atop of the airship moved aside, letting three capsules hurl out from inside the ship. A blue one, a green one, and a pink one, all of the heavy, steel containers had other compartments on their sides open up, releasing mechanical limbs attached to heavy steel wire and completing the formation of three mechs in front of Tenshinhan and Yamcha's jet. Yamcha opened the front door of the window and emerged through the side of the jet that flared blazes downward to remain in mid-air, level to the airship.

"You guys, just give up and let us pass!" Yamcha yelled at the trio of the Pilaf Crew outfitted in their robot suits that barely seemed a step more advanced than the ones they've used before. "It's me, remember?"

"Whaaa!" a cybernetically augmented shriek of Shu, the canine swordsman of Pilaf's crew, made Yamcha smirk. His reputation spoke for itself. "He's from that brat's crew!"

"Calm down, Shu, he's alone, the brat is nowhere to be seen!" Pilaf tried getting his squadmate in line.

"But this is the dreamier and more competent one…" a feminine voice left the largest, pink mech-suit. "He is trouble too! We should leave it to Demon King Piccolo and his children instead…"

"D-Did you say Demon King Piccolo!?" Tenshinhan, who to this point was just floating and looking embarrassed for the enemy, lost his cool.

"Y-Yeah, that's right! We've teamed up with Demon King Piccolo so you losers better scram and let King Piccolo collect his Dragon Ball!" Pilaf looked confused at first but then let the development of the situation work to his favor by exploiting the respectful fear and surprise in Tenshinhan's voice.

"Well then, it's just our luck…" Yamcha smiled and jumped at Tenshinhan who caught and swung his partner over to the top of the airship before reducing the jet that Yamcha flew in back to a capsule and placing it by his belt, then flying over to join his partner in laying siege to Demon King Piccolo's airship.

"Sh-Shit! They're not backing down!" Shu shook inside his robot-suit erratically enough to let out busting, metallic bangs from inside.

"Calm down, if we take care of these two, maybe King Piccolo will give us more than just one-fifth of the world to rule, maybe we'll get a full one-third!" Pilaf tried getting his cohorts back under his control and this worked somewhat.

"You're right, we should combine at once and defeat them!" Mai agreed and took her position behind the leading mech-suit.

"Let me take care of these guys…" Yamcha, with a confident smirk, turned back to Tenshinhan.

"I know what you're doing. You mean to defeat them so that I challenge Demon King Piccolo first so that then you can challenge him after me, if he defeats me, knowing his abilities and seeing him weakened after my fight. Such a lowly and pitiful attempt…" Tenshinhan mocked his rival playfully before wrapping his arms around his chest and moving back a bit. "Well… Seeing how I will defeat Demon King Piccolo anyway, there is no need for me to worry about any of that happening. I'll let you satisfy yourself with some measly robot-goons, let me know if you are in trouble and need some help."

"Are they… Really friends…?" Mai wondered aloud inside her mech-suit.


	57. Demon King Piccolo Enters the Battle!

"Pilaf-sama, we might not be able to beat this man like this, he's a friend of that brat, after all!" Mai, seated inside by far the largest and weightiest mech turned toward the smallest and the most round, blue mech in the middle.

"An excellent idea, Mai, let's fuse!" Pilaf ordered and, judging by loud thuds from inside his mech, smashed one or two switches in the process. Shu's green robot suit took a quick 360 turn before posing on the bottom, streams of intense jet fire launched Mai's pink mech suit up in the air where the sturdy legs that held it upward folded inside the suit and the pink body of the combined mech landed on top of Shu's mech.

Pilaf's mech rolled into a ball and began bouncing about, finally building up enough force to jump up and aim to land on top of the conjoined pair of mechs. The airship let out an agonizing shriek while the back of the ship took a strong nosedive downward, forcing Tenshinhan to levitate up into the air while Yamcha struggled to stay attached to the top deck of the airship.

"Disengage, disengage immediately!" Mai yelled out, upon which moment Pilaf released the magnetic bonds holding the entire fusion of mech suits together, dropping the trio of would-be rulers of the world down on their faces, scattered all over the deck.

"It appears that the ship cannot support all of us when we fuse, where the spread out mass of all three of us separately doesn't cause such tension…" Pilaf stated while his round ball of mechanical wonder pulled itself off the ground.

"What now? Maybe we should let Demon King Piccolo take care of them after all?" Shu wondered.

"Hmmm… You were crafty opponents indeed… Fine, for the sake of keeping our precious mechanical suits intact for when we take over the world, we will let the three of you face Demon King Piccolo himself!" Pilaf declared and erupted into a fit of maniacal laughter while the platforms on which the three mechanical suits stood on descended into the inner part of the airship.

"What just happened?" Yamcha turned back to Tenshinhan.

"You've won your match, you should be proud. Because I'm not letting you meddle with mine…" Tenshinhan shrugged his shoulders at Yamcha, looking content with the way that the things had transpired but acting regretful about it.

The two looked around for the most favorable entry point to the inside of the ship, managing to find only a door that could open on the sides as the platforms that Pilaf and his gang descended with sealed those entry points off from being used again. Tenshinhan floated up and around the ship, easily hovering by the door while enjoying the sight of Yamcha struggling to get around and having to risk his life scaling the zeppelin-shaped airship.

Just after Yamcha's feet touched the floaters on the bottom but before Tenshinhan could break, rip the door out or kick it down, the entryway to the inner area of the airship opened up with a prolonged mechanical squeak. At last, the pair would end up before the Demon King Piccolo…

* * *

"Who would have known that finding a Dragon Ball in such a public place would be so difficult…" Oolong complained as not even the quest to find one of the seven magical wish-fulfillment orbs managed to keep his eyes from squinting and his voice from sounding whiny.

"It's true, with buildings and alleyways in the way, things are far more difficult…" Bulma noticed while the pair made their way into a dark alleyway "We're just asking to get mugged, walking around this place like that…"

"That's what ya have me for!" Launch, in her blue form, cocked her submachine gun which was comically too drastic of a measure to deal with a mere alleyway mugger.

"It's in here!" Chiaotzu declared, floating over a bunch of toppled trash cans the contents of which laid in a massive mountain. Sadly, it wasn't such an unusual sight to see in larger towns. Puar floated about, trying to locate the Dragon Ball with a mere visual inspection.

"Don't bother, may as well have old man blast this mountain away with a Kamehameha!" Oolong pulled a sip from his juice box while kicking the massive mountain of trash only for the mountain to rumble, finally making Oolong's gazers snap open while his entire body shook from the surprise of having moved something living underneath the massive pile of trash.

"Who wakes Bacterian from his slumber!?" a rugged-looking giant stood on two feet, throwing the garbage that he laid buried down under about to his sides, revealing that the true layer of trash was far smaller than it initially seemed, it was just that the amount of flesh resting on the giant bones of the man lying underneath that made the natural structure bloat for a moment.

"The Dragon Ball!" Puar pointed at an orange crystalline orb rolling down the moving layers of garbage while Chiaotzu floated down to pick it up.

"So that's a Dragon Ball…" he muttered to himself. Before he could let his hands wrap around the Dragon Ball, however, a rude smack sent him hitting the wall on the other side of the alleyway after Bacterian decided to protect his property.

"Don't touch my property, shorty!" Bacterian warned Chiaotzu not to try anything of the sort again, the smelly bastard even went so far as to snort some snot back to his throat and prepare for a nasty spit from his mouth that was sure to pack some lethal wallop, more powerful than even his already knockout-inducing smell.

"Watch out, Chiaotzu, the naturally repugnant body odor of this man even gave Chayote trouble when she fought him in the World Martial Arts Tournament!" Muten Roshi warned the ghoulish boy from a distance farther back.

"It's okay, I don't have a nose to smell him with!" Chiaotzu declared and pointed two of his index fingers at the cranky giant.

Bacterian twitched and froze in an awkwardly sprawled out pose. His face morphed from the expression of rage into a pathetic cocktail of wiggly eyes, twitchy nose and a twisted mouth that continued to wave and waggle in the sense of daze that befell him. Chiaotzu's telekinetic powers appeared to have little to no trouble subduing Bacterian and even lifting him up into the air to where the alleyway was completely free for the Dragon Ball to be removed.

"Bulma, grab it!" Muten Roshi pointed.

"No way, I'm not burrowing through garbage!" Bulma grabbed her nose and stuck out her tongue, "Not right underneath that stinky fool! How did he rebuild all that stench after Chayote forced him to bathe just three years ago anyway?"

"It's for Yamcha-san's sake!" Puar declared and nodded as his eyes brimmed with great determination. The flying cat swooped down under and picked the Dragon Ball up from underneath Bacterian's floating bottom while Chiaotzu flicked his fingers and slammed Bacterian through the wall right behind him, leaving him lying down in his drunken, dirty stupor.

"What a chump… We were lucky he was drunk or else he'd have offered more of a fight…" Oolong noted while the Dragon Team rushed for the jet they left parked in the middle of the street a block back.

* * *

"Welcome, martial artists…" a strong and masculine yet oddly alluring voice of authority invited Tenshinhan and Yamcha to tread a little bit bolder into the area inside Pilaf's airship and into its main room, located right at the front by the control room.

"Demon King Piccolo!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth and clenched his fist up by his chest. "We've come to destroy you!"

"Oh? It's too bad that Cymbal, my dear son is gathering the Dragon Balls as we speak, starting with one not two hundred meters from our current location… I like to test my challengers for my strength these days is too valuable to waste on braggarts and imbeciles." A giant in a dark blue gi and a flowing red cape with a kanji of his own name gracing his uniform. The Great Demon King was a giant, goblin-like creature of shriveled, mossy green color in skin, sharp and pointy features. A true devil of the swamps except instead of horns the slug-man donned a pair of antennae.

"Are these by any chance the terrifying enemies you spoke of after releasing the Great Demon King Piccolo?" a short, salad-colored pterosaur-like demon in formal clothing addressed Pilaf and his gang who hid by Demon King Piccolo's side.

"N-Not quite…" Pilaf fumbled his way through words, trying to seem mighty and valuable to a Great Demon King and his valued cohort while being an utter fool oneself was no easy task, after all. "This man in the turtle gi is someone we know. He is part of the group but this three-eyed man is all new…"

"Worry not, for the strength of Demon King Piccolo is peerless and he will undoubtedly smash these detestable martial artists to…" the demonling sung his lord's praises before a bright beam pierced his abdomen and sent him slumping down with whited out eyes and completely powerless.

"Piano!" Demon King Piccolo roared out, seeing his treasured spokesperson disposed of by the three-eyed martial artist.

"This is for Krillin…" Tenshinhan stated with an outraged face, it was not tough to see that the martial artist couldn't remain calm long enough to count the seconds before his impending clash with the Great Demon King.

"You three…" Yamcha looked at Pilaf and his gang. "You three unsealed Demon King Piccolo!? Why would you do that!? Just to defeat us?"

"It's not just to defeat you, it's to rule the world! I mean… One-fifth of the world…" Pilaf declared boldly at first before feeling the escalating threat of absolute death from his side and turning to the Great Demon King who was utterly boiling in the darkness emanating from his body. "One island… Maybe?"

"You sought out the Demon King Piccolo's cage for power? Don't worry, your hour for penance will come soon enough too…" Tenshinhan scolded the group of bumbling idiots crouching by the Great Demon King Piccolo's side, frightened by the power of their own ally, even if neither of the three could sense Ki or any sort of fighting potential whatsoever, the strength Demon King Piccolo let flow through his body made one's innermost instincts of self-preservation light up with popping streamers.

"You loathsome martial artist scum!" Demon King Piccolo slammed the right side of his own throne of skulls while some mystical, telekinetic power raised his body off the ground and placed him standing in front of Tenshinhan on the opposite side of the airship. "I'd have killed you all off regardless but… Even the mind of the Great Demon King Piccolo struggles to come up with fitting punishment for the murderer of my precious son."

"Growing soft in your old age, Piccolo!" Tenshinhan taunted the shriveled, mossy demon while refusing to take any sort of fighting position, doing so as a taunt for the supposedly frightening power of the Great Demon King.

"You will address me as Great Demon King Piccolo by the time this is done!" King Piccolo growled while his eyes emitted light, gleaming with two pointy beads lighting up like flares. Tenshinhan hopped back lightly to avoid the near-invisible blitz of an ocular beam that might have broken or outright removed his leg. The body of the three-eyed martial artist blurred and moved too fast for the aged Demon King to respond.

Piccolo's neck extended to a frightening length to compensate for the power that Tenshinhan's left hook snapped his head back with. The strength of Tenshinhan was more than sufficient to lift even the giant Great Demon King Piccolo off his feet and send him crashing back down in his throne of skulls.

The eyes of the Demon King were whited out while a long and droopy streak of purple blood hung from Piccolo's nose and colored his busted lip. Pilaf, Mai and Shu shrieked out in horror that the mythical figure on which they bet all their chips got sent into a knockdown so easily, seemingly for good.

"P-Perhaps we haven't made it clear… We found Demon King Piccolo's rice cooker by accident…" Pilaf chuckled as if he and Tenshinhan were just two old chums messing around.

"Th-That's right… We were just salvaging for treasure and we found an old rice cooker, we only meant to cook some rice in the beginning, honestly…" Mai followed the example set by her superior but upon seeing the chill-inducing stare that Tenshinhan gave them she quickly shut herself up and hid behind the comically undergrown Pilaf, almost having to lift him off the ground and shield herself with the shrimp for him to offer any sort of cover for her.

"You pesky little shits… How strong you've grown…" Piccolo's voice interrupted Tenshinhan trying to come up with something to do about Pilaf and his gang. The brought down Demon King managed to crack and wriggle his body back up on his own two feet while he dragged his withered fist across his shriveled up jaw to wipe the blood off of it.

"Heh… I guess it was naïve to assume that one punch would be all it would take…" Yamcha smiled to himself, just trying to build up courage in the case if the Demon King unleashed some frightening power and defeated Tenshinhan after his return.

"Perhaps I would have been wiser to preserve my strength and not create any of my sons at all… No. I don't think that would have been enough to match your spry bodies either…" Piccolo grumbled before reaching for his collar and removing his red cape, then throwing aside. For the mere moment it took for the red drape to float past Pilaf and his gang, the trio enjoyed the improvised cover that it offered.

"There is no need for Mafuba! Come, Piccolo, I will take you down myself!" Tenshinhan declared and took his own offensive fighting stance. It was a stance that a martial artist took when they were confident of their advantage and attempted to go all-out in order to capitalize on it with full-on aggression, nothing spared for defense.

Piccolo and Tenshinhan took off at the same time, colliding with their elbows in the middle of the room, lightning bolts shot out from the point of their impact as the emanating shockwaves dimmed the room, momentarily shutting down all electrical gadgets and systems onboard before letting the room return to normal.

Tenshinhan's right foot slid back, he suffered some aftereffects from Piccolo's strength whereas Piccolo suffered nothing from the initial clash but even if Tenshinhan was in pain after hurting his forearm, he didn't show it as the two danced one around each other, throwing fists and exchanging kicks like the best of them. No. They weren't just like the best of them, the Great Demon King Piccolo was someone who has eradicated plenty of the best back in his day and Tenshinhan meant to give even the shriveled old slug a run for his money.

"You dare exchange fists with the Great Demon King!?" Demon King Piccolo roared while throwing a backhanded smack at Tenshinhan's jaw that made the three-eyed martial artist skid back with a streak of red on his lip and a black bruise on his cheek. Despite losing this first clash, Tenshinhan looked excited and even appeared to snicker at the blow he took.

"Is that all?" Tenshinhan came to wonder while taking his fighting stance again. Once again, offering nothing in terms of defensive potential and declaring that he was just going to attack his opponent.

"Bark at your own expense, dog!" Demon King Piccolo raged on as he charged with both of his fists clenched by his sides, Tenshinhan blocked the rushing knee strike and defended against a myriad of chops from above, quickly adapting on his feet and switching his stance in mid-engagement to rectify what he needed. No… He used the wrong stance to lure his enemy in on purpose, knowing he'd be able to change it before Piccolo connected with his attacks.

What confidence… What unmatched skill.

Still carrying the bruises over his body after each and every blow from the aged Demon King that he'd blocked, Tenshinhan lashed out at the Demon King when the latter appeared to have run out of steam in mid-rush. Whether his foul imagination had run out of moves to attempt on his staunch opponent or his body had failed him in keeping up the relentless barrage of body-crushing assaults, either way, Tenshinhan chopped at Piccolo's neck with both of his arms right after deflecting a pair of Demon King Piccolo's own chops and shoving his arms to the side.

Piccolo's eyes lit up crimson again, blasting out ocular beams that sent Tenshinhan flying and slamming into the wall at the back, Yamcha moved out of the way or else he'd have been taken out as well. The Great Demon King just cracked his knuckles and smirked at Yamcha, as if challenging the martial artist of the Turtle School to take the place of his fallen comrade.

"He's killed him, the Great Demon King Piccolo killed him with one blow!" Pilaf declared.

"Now I know why you losers use the robot suits to fight… Your instincts are rubbish!" Tenshinhan grunted while he stood from his collapse and dusted off his chest that appeared to carry no significant damage but ashy dust settled down on it.

"Kiai?" Demon King Piccolo wondered. "Such a fledgling form of it I can barely tell…" the slug-man mocked his opponent.

"That's okay if your knowledge is slipping up, I can teach you so you can complete your course before your death," Tenshinhan answered while taking a more balanced fighting stance.

Yamcha stared at the pair with worry, so far, Demon King Piccolo has been dominating this clash but… Something about Tenshinhan seemed so odd. It was as if Tenshinhan was not at all tired or hurt after taking so many nasty bumps and tangling one on one with the Demon King while Piccolo himself breathed extensively and even wheezed and huffed from time to time.

Nothing was decided just yet. The Great Demon King was not outside their reach for certain, he hadn't killed Tenshinhan yet and, judging by the way he was fighting, Demon King Piccolo was someone who was not in favor of a prolonged engagement that measured the stamina of both combatants for one's age had everything to do in such fights.

Even if Yamcha couldn't sense Ki with certainty how Chayote could, something about what he read in this battle suggested that he's seen very few reasons to worry just yet. All was yet to come… They could do this, they definitely could!


	58. Pilaf Airship Down!

"Have you warmed up your brittle old bones yet?" Tenshinhan taunted the Great Demon King, something he definitely would not have done if he didn't feel in control. This one was not one for bluffing. He was all honor.

"Why don't you attack me and find out?" Demon King Piccolo smirked.

"I'm afraid to end this too soon," Tenshinhan answered before tightening his fighting pose and getting serious. His body blurred and faded away. Piccolo's eyes raced across the airship to try and pick his opponent up.

"Don't get cocky!" Demon King Piccolo yelled out while a powerful shockwave emanated from his body, picking up what seemed to be an uprooting gust of wind blasting all away, spreading from every part of his body. Yamcha clutched for balance, even at the distance he was in, the Demon King's strength made it a challenge to stay on his feet.

Tenshinhan slid out of the vicinity around the Demon King with a cross-armed block to absorb the shock meant for him. It didn't look like he had suffered any damage from being this close, with his speed he must have been close enough to be hit point-blank but it didn't look like that attack was meant to kill either.

"That's quite a blast there, old man. You didn't get winded, did you?" Tenshinhan smirked after a heavy breath left his lungs. The three-eyed martial artist had to maintain an active level of breathing to keep up his Kiai bubbles and spirit-focused fighting style which became more and more complex the further into the battle one gone.

"It is true that your speed is superior to mine, that your strength is superior to mine. Perhaps you might even be tougher than me in my current body. However, I did not acquire the dread-inspiring reputation I possess by matching martial artist trash hand-to-hand…" Demon King Piccolo declared while straightening his entire body out, canceling his fighting stance for a neutral one.

A raspy roar left the lungs of Demon King Piccolo as he channeled his Ki through his entire body, forcing it to rise and escalate to untold degrees. Tenshinhan knew better than to try and attack his opponent while they channeled their Ki, it was at that point that the power of one's enemy was at their greatest, in addition, he had no idea at all when whatever the attack they were using was going to hit him. For all he knew, he may have run into it point-blank. Mistakes like that might have cost him the entire battle so Tenshinhan made sure to stand still and examine the enemy's technique after he knew what it did and how it worked, he'd be able to read and counter it afterward.

The eyes of Demon King Piccolo lit up red but only for a second. The red light emanating from them focused on a singular point at the Great Demon King's iris while the excess left his eyes in the shape of blazing, transparent aura. It was as if The Great Demon King leaked evil aura from his entire body.

Tenshinhan's body twitched and stiffened. He broke his stance and began twisting and turning into awkward angles, it was as if the Demon King began controlling Tenshinhan's body telekinetically. It was a far cruder method of mind control compared to the simple hypnosis that Muten Roshi and Jackie Chun used, it was a brutal, primitive method, to shove the enemy's limbs using brute force, where resistance would have resulted in the limb snapping.

The evil aura leaking from the Demon King's body began shining white and focusing around his hand. Then it began pulsing from a single point at the right index finger of King Piccolo. It was now that Yamcha realized Piccolo's devious plan – he froze Tenshinhan using his demonic telekinesis so that he could skewer him with a Ki attack, likely one similar to the incinerating eye beam he used before…

"Act arrogant around the Great Demon King, will you…" King Piccolo growled before throwing out his finger and letting the pulsing aura around his index finger blast off at the enemy in the shape of a beam of light. "Drop dead!"

Yamcha's eyes jerked in an impulse given birth by shock when Demon King's beam hit Tenshinhan square in the chest and sent him down. It didn't penetrate him, which likely was the intention behind the attack, but the impact did sound unpleasant, possibly invoking some fractures and, judging from Tenshinhan's facial expression, he did feel the attack for sure.

"Hmph… It seems the name of Demon King Piccolo stopped inciting the apt amount of fear into the hearts of loathsome humans. No matter, it will once I pick up where I left off…" the Demon King massaged his numb wrist with his left hand before directing a stare to Yamcha. "You… You just going to stand there silent or are you going to fight?"

"G-Great Demon King!" Mai left from Pilaf's back and rushed in front of the looming Demon King, dropping on her knees before him. It was likely because of that fact that she did not blow up where she stood the moment she interrupted him. Flattery was the only way to buy time to speak with the Demon King after all. "You will require subordinates, won't you? Now that Tambourine is dead… Why not take this man with you and offer him a chance to serve you?"

"T-That's right…" Pilaf faked a confident chuckle despite it being painfully obvious his underwear was full of warmth deep down. "You said that creating new subordinates is painful and costs you more and more of your lifeforce, right? You can bypass that by employing humans as your subordinates, just how we are helping you right now…"

"Don't joke around!" Yamcha declared after contemplating why the Pilaf crew just tried to save his life. "As if I was going to just kneel around and lick the boots of the scumbag that killed Krillin!"

"Hmph…" the Demon King took a few steps onward and closer to Yamcha, forcing Mai to crawl out of his way and back to her crew. "I should have been the last person to forget that the only acceptable kind of martial artist is a dead one…"

Yamcha lunged at the enemy. Piccolo tempered his body but it was too late, a swipe from Yamcha's hand slammed against Piccolo's temple and scratched downward, followed up by a barrage of similar swipes from his hand. Having caught his opponent off-guard this way, Yamcha continued his blurry barrage of strikes, repurposing them into thrusts, all Piccolo could see was his palms with clutched fingers, like a lion's paw, all Piccolo could feel in that moment was pain.

Little by little, Demon King Piccolo was giving ground to his opponent, skidding back on his wooden boots while Yamcha continued to wreak havoc upon the body of his enemy, not knowing anything about the anatomy of the Demon King, which points of his body were vital, where hitting him would hurt, knowing only that by the time he stopped hitting he'd be hit back, Yamcha continued attacking as long as his dazed enemy allowed it.

Finally, Yamcha could strike no more. His hands felt heavy like led, his things were burning up and it seemed like ages since he's drawn breath. Yamcha concluded his barrage of attacks with a thrust of both hands, similar to one he performed when blasting off his Kamehameha but this time just driving his palms in brute force into Piccolo's chest, hoping that if the Demon King had a ribcage to bust – it would be dust by now. With whited out eyes and purple blood spat up from his mouth, Demon King Piccolo stumbled and fell back into his throne of skulls, slumping like a bag of bricks.

"Alright! How about that!?" Yamcha cheered himself on, not having the faintest clue how he did so well against the enemy that might have seriously injured or even killed Tenshinhan.

"Hey, hold back a little…" a voice came from behind him, prompting Yamcha to turn back and see Tenshinhan on his bottom, rising back to his feet with a small bruise on his chest where the Demon King's beam hit him.

"Tenshinhan…" Yamcha turned to his partner in confusion. "This guy, he's nothing… Why did you struggle so much against him?"

"It's true, I didn't use anywhere near my full power against him earlier. I wanted to see the legendary power that killed so many martial artists, but, most of all, I wanted to punish him for disrespecting martial arts and being foul enough to try and kill off all martial artists just because he fears one technique. A true martial artist fears no technique, even if they do lose to it, they adapt and grow stronger. They certainly don't go around killing martial artists to avoid one specific martial artist or a technique they use…" Tenshinhan explained. "We can kill him at any time we want but before we do, we must punish him and teach the Evil Clan to never return, their time holding the world hostage is over."

"Cymbal…" Piccolo grumbled, spitting a mouthful of purple goop from his mouth to the side and standing back up on his feet, stumbling a couple of times while approaching the pair of martial artists in front of him. "I've lost Cymbal… My son… Those loathsome humans killed my boy…"

"Oh? Someone offed another one of your spawns? Glad to hear it…" Tenshinhan sighed. "As if a Demon scumbag like you could even feel remorse and grief… It's not for remorse that I plan to pummel you and drive you to the very edge of death before taking you out, it's so that you and your entire clan can feel fear, the only emotion you folks can understand."

"You little shits!" the Demon King Piccolo flipped out, throwing his hands to the sides while his eyes whited out and let out bursts of white aura from them. A flare of malevolent, ethereal bursts began blazing around the body of the enraged Demon King. "What would you know about my grief!? Every time a Demon gives birth to their son, it's like they shave off a part of their own life. It's like they share their own lifeforce and strength with their son, hoping they grow and take care of that power. It is the noblest thing that a Demon can do and you pathetic turds have taken out two of my sons already! You know what the most ironic thing is?"

"What would that be?" Yamcha wondered, taking Tenshinhan's side and entering a fighting stance, having decided to put the end to the Demon King before he did something stupid out of desperation, being in the state that Tenshinhan rightfully drove him into.

"That despite the love I felt for my sons, I regret giving birth to them, because if I hadn't, I'd still have enough power to eat your hearts in front of your horrified, blood-covered faces!" the Demon King let all of his rustling power erupt out at once. He must have known that he was out of his element and yet he was furious enough to not care and just want to punish the two martial artists in front of him anyway.

"You three…" Yamcha looked on at the Pilaf crew. "You're not completely rotten inside like this guy. You're just really stupid. Go back into your mechs and get out of here. One way or another, this won't end well and I'd hate having your unfortunate ends on my consciousness."

The Pilaf crew didn't need to be told to leave twice. They were itching to leave since this brawl began but they feared Piccolo's retribution, now that they saw for certain that the humans were in control of this, that the Demon King Piccolo was too blinded with the wish to avenge his fallen sons and to repay the transgressions that these humans have committed with blood and torment, repay them hundredfold, they felt like it was as safe to leave as it would ever get.

The lights in the airship struggled to keep the place lit up in the massive electromagnetic fields that the overwhelming Ki contained inside put out, the out of this world energy that all three warriors let rage shook the airship, again and again, once even making Pilaf slip off the ladder and fall down on his head, only to cry out in panic and scurry back up with a massive bump on his head.

The Demon King extended his hand, Yamcha and Tenshinhan prepared to block, expecting a Ki blast but it was the entire limb of the slug-man that extended onward at them. The elongated hand took a cold and unyielding clutch onto Yamcha's Turtle School gi and began pulling him in but Tenshinhan's knee served as an anvil to the hammer strike of his elbow, crushing the arm in between two extremes and forcing the Demon King to rile back in pain.

That was when the pair attacked together. The Demon King roared out wildly into the air, unleashing an almighty Ki explosion around him that peeled the Pilaf airship apart like a mad and unsatisfied writer tore up the sheet of paper containing the source of their ire. The dislodged and crushed ship parts scattered about while the Demon King floated up above, panting from exhaustion.

Tenshinhan propelled Yamcha onward with his cupped hands serving as a basis for Yamcha's boot to kick off in his charge at the Demon King. Since Tenshinhan was faster than Yamcha and could levitate, he caught up with his partner and the two unleashed a team-combination of strikes against the tuckered out Demon King. While Yamcha's fists laid siege on his enemy's body with the Wolf Fang Fist, Tenshinhan moved in from behind Piccolo and let his own fists blur and disappear for good, striking at his enemy like automated gunfire.

The Great Demon King was reduced to a pathetic, bleeding mess when the two finished their combination with their coup de grâce of their respective rush attacks. The beaten and broken, bloody pulp plummetted to the prairies below while Tenshinhan grabbed hold of Yamcha's hand and kept the pair of them afloat.

"Hmph… I should blast that bastard with a Kikoho to eliminate his body, just in case he survived." Tenshinhan grumbled. "Too bad I have to hold on to you, deadweight…" he smirked at Yamcha.

"I seem to recall being the one who crippled King Piccolo after he took you down while you fooled around." Yamcha came back at his rival.

"Do you often take pride in attacking your enemy when they've realized their son was dead and have let down their guard?" Tenshinhan wondered.

"Oh shut up, besides, if you did use the Kikoho, it would be me who would have to drag your worn-out body back to Muten Roshi through this damned prairie." Yamcha bickered.

"Heh, well, at least you'd get some training done that way, who knows, in a thousand years, maybe you'll be worth fighting again?" Tenshinhan answered. "Either way, use your jet to get clear, I'll destroy this place so that not a trace of the Demon King remains."

"Wait, you were serious? You do know that technique shortens your lifespan, right?" Yamcha looked surprised. "We kicked his ass, he's not a threat to the world anymore, plus, he might have died from that beatdown or the crazy fall already."

"I'm not taking that chance, he looked pretty lively to me and scum like him always stick around longer than they have any right to," Tenshinhan growled before throwing Yamcha to the side, the martial artist flipped a pair of times while throwing a capsule from his pocket that unsealed the jet that was contained within. Yamcha entered the jet and started it in mid-air, taking off just inches before the jet hit the thick layer of ancient-looking trees in the prairie and blasted off into the distance.

Looking at the rearview mirrors, Yamcha saw a flash of bright white light that forced him to look the other way if he didn't want it to blind him. Had there been any aircraft in his way, he'd have most certainly smacked into it as long after the Kikoho had settled down Yamcha's eyes kept seeing double and watering. Not to mention the rumbling noise and tremendous turbulence…

The cranky and shell-shocked martial artist turned the aircraft around to pick up his friend who without a doubt had tuckered himself out completely with that technique again. This time he used it at a much larger range than against Goku in the World Martial Arts Tournament. This way the focus and destructive power of the technique was greatly lessened but it covered more area. Tenshinhan must have counted on the Demon King to have peeled his bloody mess of a face off the ground and tried to run…

Yamcha landed his jet beside the dusty and hyperventilating body of his friend. It didn't take much to find him, it would have taken much longer to do so had it not been for a curious-looking hillbilly with a sword standing by Tenshinhan, ready to stab his blade through the exhausted body of the three-eyed martial artist.

"What da heck, ya bastard!?" the fatso with the sword yelled at Tenshinhan. "Yer one 'a dose dragon bastards, ain'tcha!? What with yer three eyes and whatnot!"

"Stand down, this man is my friend!" Yamcha took the attention of the swordsman by yelling at him from the air so that he didn't skewer Tenshinhan before he could land and get to him. "He tried to finish off a fight we picked with the Demon King Piccolo. You said you've met some dragons or something like that?"

"Yeh, it came at me right from da sky, swooped in an' tried ta strangle me ta get dis 'ere ball thingy…" the swordsman pointed at the Dragon Ball hanging by his neck that Yamcha, by all means, should have noticed far sooner, given how the swordsman was busted up and completely naked, save from the red rags of loincloth that still remained around his crotch area because if there was a God, it was merciful for those it had created.

"The Dragon Ball…" Yamcha mumbled. "We might need that. Could you perhaps let us borrow it?"

"You too? I mean da dragon I can understand, if somebody stole my balls I'd be pretty cranky too but you?! Yer just bein' creepy an' weird!" the swordsman took a defensive swordsmanship stance, directing the point of his blade at Yamcha now. "Not ta mention dis 'ere guy blastin' the whole prairie… This was my prairie! It's even called Yajirobe's prairie, fer Pete's sake!"

"I… I don't recall reading that about this place…" Yamcha stroke the back of his head, feeling uncomfortable about the trouble he had caused to this swordsman but realizing he might not have had a chance to talk to him without first showing him that violence against them was pointless. "Anyway, we kind of need that Dragon Ball and you've threatened my friend too so… If I beat you – we're square, okay?"

"Yeh, the winner can eat da loser for all I care, though you look all hairy and such… Reckon yer not too tasty…" Yajirobe stuck out his tongue, feeling sick by the mere mention of the idea of having to eat Yamcha even though he was the one to bring it up in the first place.


	59. Ins and Outs of the Rasslin' Business

Yamcha's eye let out an involuntary jerk when Yajirobe took off at him, his hand positioned over the hilt of his blade but it was no time at all before the martial artist noticed something off about his opponent. Yajirobe slumped and stumbled as if he could barely hold his body together and when he dashed forward, taking off the ground and pulling his sword out in a draw-slash, there was no blade to slash at Yamcha with, just a handle with busted and crumbled steel, chunks of which still fell off of the ruined sword.

Without trying to embarrass his opponent too much, Yamcha stepped aside, letting Yajirobe plant on his face. He reached out over Yajirobe's loincloth and lifted the chubby ronin up by it, squeezing his groin and forcing signs of life back to his self-incapacitated opponent.

"You're pretty banged up, it's no surprise, if you got hit by even a bit of Tenshinhan's attack, you might need help…" Yamcha tried establishing a connection with the strange ronin. Judging by his moves, Yajirobe was a skilled swordfighter and more than an average martial artist in his own right but the injuries he suffered when catching the edge of Tenshinhan's devastating, widespread Kikoho had been crushing to his body.

"Let go! Ye bastard, ye've just disturbed my meal, that's it!" Yajirobe grumbled, throwing fists wildly to the sides but failing to land a single punch or kick.

"I can help you with that. I've got some beans with me that…" Yamcha patted himself down before moving down to his belt, after removing a small bag where the Senzu were meant to be, the martial artist widened his stare in surprise. "Damn… We've kind of went ham with the Senzu during the tournament, they're all gone… Tell you what, I and my friend are headed to the Korin Tower in the Sacred Land of Korin. If you come with us, we can feed you and heal you all at once as an apology. Then we'll see what can be done about that Dragon Ball on your neck, maybe Korin-san will have something to trade for it…"

"I'mma kill all a ye!" Yajirobe struggled, continuing to throw hands and feet around but in his current state his attempts to attack appeared most like swimming in mid-air.

"Well, it doesn't look like you can resist so I'll have to help you, even if it's against your will, okay, buddy?" Yamcha lifted Yajirobe closer to eye left before having to lean his head back to avoid a spit from the round cheeks of his newly met ronin acquaintance. After putting Yajirobe down in a less than gracious way, Yamcha furrowed in the contents of his capsule case.

"S kidnappin' 's what it is…" Yajirobe kept on complaining even with his face down in the mud. Yamcha had hoped that lying face down would shut him up even if just for a little bit but he appeared to have been wrong.

"Huh… I guess I'll have to climb the Korin Tower again with the both of you on my back… Man…" Yamcha sighed and lifted Tenshinhan and Yajirobe back to the jet before placing his own bottom down by the driver seat. The blasts of flames coming out of the jet's engine threw around layers upon layers of ash, raising them up in impressive clouds of gray. Soon enough Yamcha's jet blasted off and was nothing but a blinking gleam out in the distance when looking on from the prairie.

* * *

"Say… Why don't we split up, Bulma has a whole bunch of those radars, don't she? That way we can cover more of those Dragon Balls way faster…" Blond Launch suggested after pulling out a submachine gun and cocking it in front of everybody, forcing Bulma and Muten Roshi to jump at her and try to shove the gun back under her shirt, where it came from.

"We don't need you to shoot up anything here. This is a public event and I'm the daughter of Dr. Brief of the Capsule Corp. It's easy pickings to get the tickets and even if I can't get them – no promoted would skip the opportunity of free publicity of hosting cute and charming ol' me and my friends…" Bulma looked outraged at Launch at first over her heavily armed stunt but then, after changing the topic back onto her preferred subject – herself and what she brought onto the table, her cheeks blushed a bit and her eyes got all dreamy. "Plus, if we split up and King Piccolo or his goons takes one of our Dragon Balls - it's all over, we can't possibly off him without confronting him which is what we're trying to avoid."

"I don't get what's such a fuss with you two…" Launch growled after elbowing Muten Roshi straight in his bald head for touching up her breasts while trying to hide her gun. As sturdy as the martial artist was, he was forced to stagger away in a haze almost as dreamy as that of Bulma's. "I've pulled this trick way too many times, I'd 'a pulled the cops off 'a your tails while you made your way in…"

"So, do you guys really think that the Dragon Ball would be in this joint?" Oolong squinted at the massive arena with flashing lights. "Even if it is here, how will we find it?"

"It's true that it will be difficult to find if one of the spectators of this place has it…" Bulma noted, giving the Dragon Radar in her hands an occasional peek. "Still, the radar doesn't pick up anything but the Dragon Ball and if the event is something of a sports competition, we can roam the place in the dark undisturbed."

"It's been a while…" Chiaotzu sighed floating by the group alongside Puar, who also possessed a similar ability although Puar's appeared to be more based on his natural features rather than martial arts prowess and telekinetic powers. "Do you guys think Yamcha and Ten-san are okay?"

Bulma looked up at the night's sky, Yamcha and Tenshinhan took off in the different direction, the Dragon Team took off to the north-east whereas the two took off to the north-west, they were likely to be in a different time zone so they likely weren't roaming around the place in the middle of the night like the Dragon Team was. Rest was sort of out of the question when the Dragon Balls needed to be collected and the threat of Piccolo ended as soon as possible…

"They better be, if Yamcha gets himself killed, the ogres will be the least of his worries!" Bulma ground her teeth and clenched her fist out in front of her.

"Hey, look at that!" Blond Launch pointed her thumb at the poster on the wall of the sports arena beside the entrance. The poster depicted a handsome young male with bandaged arms and curly hair in a victorious stance, wearing a golden belt around his waist that had a very familiar one-starred orb in the center for decoration.

"That's amazing!" the group all erupted in chants of joy. They lucked out to find out that they won't need to feel people up in the dark and scour the place for the Dragon Ball.

"I know, right? That belt's worth at least fifty thousand Zeni with all that gold…" Blond Launch poked her thumb at the martial artist depicted on the poster.

"That's not what we're cheering on for, Launch-san, it's the one-star Dragon Ball on his belt." Puar let Launch in on the loop.

"That man… It's Pamput!" Bulma recognized the man on the poster. "Pamput the unstoppable fighter and an international movie star!"

A low-pitched and grungy laughter demanded the entirety of the crew's attention as a short and chubby man of violet hair that grew into some thick mutton chops and a mustache that looked more like a hairy caterpillar than stylish facial hair appeared from the shade, the security goons that oversaw the entry to the event moved aside to let the man out, suggesting he was of high social status around the parts.

"I see Pamput has fans in some high places!" the man in a white suit declared and tilted his hat while he introduced himself. "Name's Vodka, I'm the chairman of this here wrestling league! In fact, this very league was built with contributions from both me and Pamput himself, out of the money he won in the two martial arts tournaments he had won."

"Oh, he's that good?" Chiaotzu wondered, pressing his tiny, white finger to his mouth. "How come he didn't participate in the World Martial Arts Tournament then?"

"Sh-Shut up, pipsqueak!" Vodka got all worked up all of a sudden. "Our work here with our wrestling league transcends that old lumpkin ball… Plus, Pamput did participate, it's just that the timing was off, he was just after another tournament he had won and a nasty injury didn't let him get past the preliminaries!"

Following Vodka inside, the Dragon Team saw a sorry sight for a wrestling league, especially one that rented out such a massive hall all for itself on such an evening. While the timing of the opening night being set the same evening when the World Martial Arts Tournament concluded played into the lack of filled up seats in the place, it couldn't have been the only reason…

Inside the ring, Pamput dispatched of an unimpressive man in his wrestling tights with a couple of stiffer shots and stepped on him for the count, posing as the referee counted up to three and declared the end of the match. The general excitement of the event didn't go too high up even when Pamput began a handicap match immediately after, quickly taking down two opponents with roundhouse kicks to the face while he forced the third to tap out with a pathetic yelp once Pamput put him into an armlock.

"Man… This event is a bust… Nobody's coming and even when they are, they don't look like they're having any fun…" Vodka sighed. "That's where you can come in…" he turned to Bulma.

"Oh?" Bulma acted surprised, even though she knew exactly where the meaty dwarf was going.

"Yes, I know you, everybody knows you, you're that daughter of Dr. Brief, the professor in charge of the Capsule Corporation, you were the TV when that army guy kidnapped you a couple of years ago! If you waltzed around, switched seats all over the place with your friends, maybe we'd get noticed a bit more, gather some more buzz?" Vodka suggested.

"I can definitely do that…" Bulma cringed into her hand, while she didn't look all too proud of the fact she was known for being kidnapped on live television, as evidenced by her bemused expression when Vodka spoke of that event when the man brought up Bulma's public status as a celebrity of more than just the scientific world, she shimmered like a polished star.

"Man, forget it, I'm outta here…" Blond Launch threw her hand up in dismissal of the wrestling league event going on. "No way I'm watching this crap whole night while Bulma struts around…"

"Oh, come on, Bulma's friend, this is rasslin', don't you know? This is great, this ain't like that World Martial Arts Tournament highfalutin, technical junk, this is pure entertainment, an event where the charisma of the martial artist transcends everything else!" Vodka tried grabbing hold of Launch's hand but the blonde turned around holstering an oversized handgun in the other hand, daring the little gangster hold on to her hand for a few more seconds.

"Wise chick, eh? Well… Two of us can play this game!" Vodka reached into his suit for a piece of his own while a handful of goons stood up from their seats, revealing the fact that a decent chunk of the visitors present in the event belonged to Vodka's own criminal enterprise.

"Whoa! Why don't you guys settle down!" Oolong stepped into the middle between Launch and Vodka. "How about we sit down and watch some wrestling, Bulma helps build this amateur league up and then we can talk about that belt…"

"That belt? What about it?" Vodka raised an eyebrow, putting a gun right to Oolong's temple, implying that if the anthropomorphic pig spoke his mind about disliking the belt, he'd wear a full metal jacket for his breezy May evening.

"Your belt has a Dragon Ball on it. It's the little crystal orb in the center with one star on it. We need it for… Capsule Corp, science business… You wouldn't understand." Bulma crossed her arms over her chest. Flustered about misreading the situation and threatening Bulma's friend, risking the well-being of his new business opportunity, Vodka put his gun back into his inner pocket and fixed his tie.

"W-Well… Yes… We happened to stumble into it on accident during an auction when we looked for a cool gemstone to put onto our belt. That one star really made the deal happen for us, it just yells Number One, don't you think!?" Vodka chuckled into his own hand, feeling all too clever about himself. "Though, if you need it, for scientific, Capsule Corp business, no less… I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement to both of us, capisce?"

"Wait, you mean for us to buy it off of your hands after all the hard work of building your league up!?" Bulma leaned over and reared her teeth at the aged gangster, making him lean back and shrivel in response.

"Come on, ya gotta understand we're running a business 'ere, kid…" Vodka threw his hands out in front of himself as an attempt to defuse the situation to the best of his abilities.

"Not like that you ain't…" Oolong pouted his lips and sassed the gangster, having forgotten that he had a gun pressed to his temple not a full minute ago. "I've seen wrestling and this here ain't it…" the anthropomorphic pig declared.

"Huh? What a mere pig would know about wrestling?!" Vodka turned back to Oolong, finding him a much more fitting pushover to his not at all threatening criminal presence compared to the blue-haired genius girl he depended his business success on.

"A pig would make a better opponent to that Pumput guy than any of those losers, for once… Let me into the ring for one minute and I'll make it a show… For some extra dough, of course…" Oolong rubbed his hands.

"Are you kidding? Having a pig fight my undefeated and undisputed champion will sink me under the ground, with Bulma-chan's support or without it…" Vodka yelled back at the pig, finding his demands entirely ridiculous.

"Fine… You can keep your money… Say… Maybe your league has any female wrestlers who could reward us with their wrestling gear? Some tights, for example…" Oolong showed his tongue while jiggling something that wasn't where he was trying to jiggle it despite his avid imagination bringing it to life right in front of Oolong.

"Huh?" Muten Roshi got interested all of a sudden and shoved Oolong out of the way. "He's right, you know… Oolong has the ability to transform, you can have your champion face all sorts of unruly opponents, devils, dinosaurs and the like. And this one…" Roshi snagged Puar out of thin air and shoved it up to Vodka's face, "This one can transform even better than Oolong, his transformations last way longer. These two can make it work for you, so how about those tights… I mean that Dragon Ball!?"

Vodka scratched his chin for a fair moment. The possibility of Pamput fighting anything or anyone his mind could imagine and protect his belt against them would build up the championship's value even if it didn't have the nice, orange, crystal orb with one star on it.

"And that's two!" Bulma chuckled still riding the highs of energy that being recognized and flattered by the crowd that really got into it the moment that an armored monster reaching five meters in size entered the ring to claim Pamput's championship but lost to the champ in under a minute. Rinse and repeat a few more times with Puar's help while Oolong's transformation ability went off its cooldown. "Who knew it would be this easy!?"

"Speak for yourself…" Oolong cried out, rubbing his cheek. He might have lost more than a few teeth there over the evening. "That Pamput guy doesn't know the first thing about wrestling, he's stiffer than a coat of lead. And we didn't even get any tights, that guy doesn't employ any girls, can you believe it? What a sexist!"

"You're the one to speak!" Bulma pounded Oolong and ground her fist into his head. She had considered showing the poor shapeshifter some mercy since it truly did work some wonders in that ring, despite only being able to wrestle for about a minute, but her composure was even worse than always when she hadn't had her beauty sleep.

"Just for the sake of reference, I do not condone all that violence…" blue-haired Launch spoke up in a soft and squeaky voice. A heavy thud let it be known that one of her guns that she held stuffed in her bra underneath her top slipped out and hit the ground, nearly going off. "Oh my…" she covered her mouth. "Is that mine?"

"We'll have to switch shifts while we're flying to the next location," Bulma suggested. "We're traveling all over the world here and there's a fat chance that the next Dragon Ball will be anywhere where we can reach it before the morning."

Her suggestion interrupted the brief fit of laughter that the group shared over Launch's usual antics. Beat and sleepy, the Dragon Team fumbled into the plane while Chiaotzu floated into it with probably the most energy. The little ghoul usually looked the least lively out of any group he was a part of so the sign that he looked the liveliest after not changing one bit showed how bad things truly were at the moment.

"Onto… The next adventure…" Bulma yawned before pressing the button that lit up the exhaust pipes and blasted the jet off in a streak of burning jet fuel.


	60. Doorway to Afterlife

The Dragon Team entered a small shop where an aged gentleman sat behind a counter, clad in vision-enhancing visors and hunched over a project he was working on. Sparks flew from a crystal orb in his hands that he continued to stream beams of concentrated heat on in an attempt to mold it a tad but the sphere did not change whatsoever.

"That's the Dragon Ball he's beaming!" Chiaotzu pointed at the crystal orb with a horrified expression on his face. The ghoulish boy raised his fingers, forcing the Dragon Ball to shoot in his direction. Chiaotzu's pale hands wrapped around the Dragon Ball and then dropped it down into Oolong's hands. The shapeshifter squealed in pain from the heated sphere landing in his hands, it was only because of how easily Chiaotzu handled the artifact that Oolong expected to have a similarly easy time handling it too.

"Hey, give that back! That's my work you've stolen!" the man jumped up on his feet and ran up to the group, while the group did outnumber him and the little, floaty boy even could use mysterious telekinetic powers to snag his work from his hands, the man looked confident with his abilities to beat all of them since there were no notable people amongst them. Just women, mascots, an old man and a weirdo.

"You can't just stream heat onto a Dragon Ball like that!" Bulma scolded the man. "What if you damage it and we can't use it anymore? Sheesh, we could have destroyed the very concept of the Dragon Balls just because some old fart decided to melt it…" the young lady wiped the sweat off of her forehead.

"That's not yours! A man brought it to me to make a wedding ring! Please give it back, I'm already having a tough enough time as it is!" the craftsman demanded and extended his hand. Oolong, donning a cheeky grin, extended the Dragon Ball to the man, hoping that he'd drop it, surprised by the heat as well, but Muten Roshi stepped in between him and the jeweler.

"Please excuse us, but we need this orb to save the world. This young lady here is Bulma, the daughter of Dr. Brief, the head of Capsule Corp, she can reimburse your expenses with some on top." Muten Roshi explained.

"That's not for me to decide," the jeweler shook his head. "You'll need to speak to my client when he comes back and, when he does come back, he'll be expecting his ring!"

"Well, you can't just melt the Dragon Ball, it's made through magical means so… I don't think convincing this client of yours will be that tough." Bulma shrugged.

"Well, if I can't melt the jewel itself, I'll melt the steel of the ring to attach to it." The jeweler spoke his mind but Bulma handed the Dragon Ball to Launch. The old man struggled with the group, deciding to obtain the Dragon Ball via rougher means but Chiaotzu lifted the old man off the ground by pointing both of his index fingers at him, effectively disarming him.

"Thugs! Thieves…!" the old jeweler threw fists and kicked the thin air around him but he showed no hope of breaking out of Chiaotzu's telekinesis whatsoever.

It took the man responsible for finding the Dragon Ball and deciding to put it on a ring as a massive gemstone a few hours to come back. By that time, Bulma reckoned, the group might have found another Dragon Ball but, out of human decency, the group stayed around to barter with the original founder. It was a surprise to everyone that a man in a white tuxedo, short of stature but remarkably plump, of rounder facial features and very pronounced, thick lips and messy, brown hair found the Dragon Ball.

"You!" the man pointed at Chiaotzu, "You're that guy from the tournament, aren't you!?"

"Huh? Do we know you?" Chiaotzu scratched his head and, at last, allowed the floating jeweler to set his feet back on the floor.

"Oh, don't recognize me now that I'm gorgeous, do you?" the definitively less than gorgeous man toyed with his bowtie with a vain expression on his face. "I am none other than Man-Wolf! You might find me difficult to recognize now that I am in my human form as you'd be used to my ugly and ferocious wolf form."

"Ah… I see…" Chiaotzu looked down. He appeared to be embarrassed about something, possibly both because he still only vaguely recalled the man in question, even after he introduced himself and explained where the two had met before and because, even if he did recognize him, he neither found his human form all that attractive or his wolf form at all ferocious.

"You are the client that has requested to make the Dragon Ball into a ring, correct?" Muten Roshi, who at first appeared to be positively freaked out about something after the man's entrance into the shop but then regained confidence, since he's realized that the Man-Wolf could not recognize him now, asked.

"Why yes, I was not sure it was called that or that there was anything special about it at all but… I have met a very special lady the day after the tournament and I wish to propose to her with the most extravagant ring on this planet, I seemed like the luckiest man on Earth to find this gemstone too…" Man-Wolf nodded, appearing as dreamy about his situation as he spoke of it.

"If it is not too much trouble, we'd like to buy it off of you. This young lady would be quite capable of compensating you for the gemstone's value, you see. This gemstone indeed has special qualities." Muten Roshi pointed out.

"Although only in the quantity of seven, it is meaningless all by itself so don't get any bright ideas here…" Bulma squinted at Man-Wolf, reading the man's expression like an open book.

"Well… If you can compensate the orb's value at the rate of a gemstone of the same size, it would be no problem for me at all." Man-Wolf nodded.

"What!? I'm not paying for ruby or sapphire of a Dragon Ball's size! That's a whole fortune!" Bulma reared her fangs, appearing much more like a rabid wolf than the man who once quite literally wore a wolf's skin over that of his own.

"B-Bulma…" Muten Roshi stepped in between Bulma and Man-Wolf, trying to calm the young lady down. "Please be reasonable here, you can afford it…"

Muten Roshi did not let the opportunity slip to touch Bulma's chest when she came at Man-Wolf with her fist over the head, intending to pound some sense into the face of the rather unsightly plumpy. Instead, she let out of her fury at the handsy old fart, something that Roshi must have seen coming, provided the woman's wrath evident on her face and their past history of similar crime and punishment chemistry between them but, even if he did see it coming, Muten Roshi showed no effort in trying to avoid it.

"Of course I can afford it, that's not the problem. It's the general principle of the thing! Why does this weirdo even need to put a ring of that size on his lady's gentle finger!?" Bulma threw fists in the air, like warning shots of what was to come if she laid her hands on the confused and taken aback shorty.

"Puppy!" a humanoid of great bodily mass and proportions sufficient to fit the entire room of people present in the jeweler's shop burst through the door. She had merely pushed it daintily but due to her body mass and gross excess of physical strength due to her size and weight, the woman very nearly pushed the very shop off of its foundation in the process.

"Dearest! Oh my!" Man-Wolf turned toward his sympathy, easily thrice his size, and then began looking around the shop with a horrified expression. "Of course… I expected the ring to be done by now… That's why I told you to meet me here and now…" he smacked his face and shook his head.

"Ummm… So that was… A ruby the size of a Dragon Ball, correct?" Bulma slurred out, still taken aback by being proven wrong by the fact that Man-Wolf's "gentle-fingered" fiancée would find such a ring excessive and overall too heavy for her delicate fingers. "Yes, that seems about right…" she answered her own question and handed Man-Wolf a pink case full of capsules.

Confused about the affair, Man-Wolf handed the same case to his beloved who promptly opened it up and began checking the capsules. "Huh?" she groaned. "Since you've chosen to meet in a jeweler's place, I expected a ring and a proposition, puppy…" the giantess complained.

"W-Well… You'll find this capsule much more suitable for newlyweds, it has everything you might ever need – multiple portable houses, various vehicles and even necessary as well as more deluxe appliances and gadgets. Everything you will need for a married life that's sweeter than honey!" Bulma pitched her impromptu present. "That's all courtesy of Capsule Corporation, of course!" she winked at the lady that, quite frankly, was the most suitable possible wife for the groom.

"Wow, you're so mindful, puppy-poo!" the woman wrapped her oak-sized arms around her suitor and lifted him off the ground, shaking him in the air while squeezing the life out of him with love. "I'll make sure to be the best wife you can hope for!" the lady pretty much burst outside of the jeweler's shop with her dragging to-be groom in hand.

"W-Wait now… Does anyone still need a ring?" the jeweler babbled with a weak voice, made punier by the confusing happenings that transpired in front of him over what started as a standard day's work.

"I… I don't believe so, no…" Blue-haired Launch admitted. "Now that you mention it, what we've done feels a bit horrible…"

"All that matters is that we've got this!" Bulma tilted up the third Dragon Ball in the Dragon Team's possession.

"You're all just the worst! Get out of my shop!" the jeweler let out his rage now that he once again had space for it after the confusion vacated his mind.

* * *

"Baba!" Goku's desperate voice sliced through the calm sky. He repeated his yell once more after his feet landed on the sandy ground and Kinto bolted off into the skies above, having delivered its master to where he wanted to be.

Chayote landed not too far beside the Saiyan boy and approached the Ghost Usher. A decent chunk of martial artists shook in their boots, pointing at Chayote with the fear for their lives. It appeared that the place had been flourishing now that Chayote had vacated the spot of the final combatant. People once more had hope that they could have completed Baba's challenge.

"Th-The monster-girl is back!" a large man in a karateka's attire and a black belt of sufficient size to go around an entire building all by itself pointed at Chayote, his face twitched and his giant thighs quivered as if he was a schoolboy worrying about an upcoming lesson he hadn't prepared for.

"My, my, Chayote-san… The business has been booming for the couple of days you've been gone. To be certain, even Fortuneteller Baba hadn't seen such an effect of your presence coming. If you've come to take your place as the fifth combatant again, I'm afraid Baba might not accept those terms…" the Ghost Usher smiled at Chayote.

"I've no need for that, I'm here to cash in my Free Return Ticket." Chayote pointed out her hand, gripping a weathered ticket in her hand that's been stapled together by the middle and soaked in coffee stains. None of those were Chayote's doing, it was the Fortuneteller herself who needed to take better care of free revival artifacts.

"Oh my… I had expected Goku-san to come here to cash it in to pull you back… Are you sure about that?" the Ghost Usher wondered.

"Hell yeah!" Chayote almost shoved the ticket up the Ghost Usher's throat, forcing the apparition to take Chayote's declaration as seriously as it required to be taken.

"V-Very well… If all of you guys would stay here for a moment, I'm going to help Chayote-san and Goku-san finish their business here and then I'll serve all of your needs!" the Ghost Usher addressed the visitors that by all means should have been outraged but they appeared to be most delighted that an excuse presented itself to bail out on having to challenge Chayote.

"Y-You know what… You guys seem busy… Maybe it's not the best time…" the colossal karateka faked a hearty laugh.

"Y-Yeah… Now that you mention it… My belly is getting pretty achy… What could be making it act up like that, I wonder… Perhaps we should come back tomorrow, after all!" another martial artist agreed with his companion while a whole group of rabble-rousers, genuine martial artists and general scumbags alike fled the scene upon the return of the dreaded Saiyan girl.

"Huh… Those guys seem pretty puny. Did you feed them something? I was going to ask you make us something too, I bet Krillin's gonna be really famished after coming back to life but… If you've poisoned them, I won't be having anything! Well… Maybe just a little bit…" Goku referenced the sudden dispersal of the booming business Baba currently had going.

"Oh, not at all… Chayote-san has built up a reputation for herself, you see. Over the last couple of years, while she trained here, she's served as Baba's fifth competitor. Usually, nobody even gets that far, that's true, but oftentimes Baba found herself a guy in the Afterlife that she wanted to serve as her fifth or when Dracula-Man was sick, she sometimes fought in the place of earlier guys too. As you see, she's built herself up the reputation of a true monster, in a different kind of sense than the genuine monsters Baba employs…" the Usher laughed at his own pun that he then had to explain. Despite him making the pun and then explaining it afterward too, Goku didn't appear at all amused by it, which made the Ghost Usher's expression bleak as well.

"In any case, here she is…" the Ghost Usher pointed at Baba.

"Ara-ara…" Fortuneteller Baba turned to Chayote and Goku. "I did not foresee this. What could you two be doing here right now?"

"We're here to cash in the ticket." Chayote pointed the Free Return Ticket to Baba now.

"Wh-What!? That's… So unexpected! Who died?! Don't tell me that brother of mine finally kicked the bucket…" the Fortuneteller nearly lost her hat. "I had foreseen it being Son Goku who would cash in the ticket to return your life, Chayote. Are you sure you wish to use it this way? Knowing what waits for you if you die?"

"Wait… What? Chayote was going to die!?" Goku dropped his jaw.

"Yes. In fact, I'm still quite certain she's going to die about seven years from now." Fortuneteller nodded, appearing about as adamant about her prediction as she usually was.

"Well, your predictions suck anyway, you didn't see us being here, did you?" Chayote tried shrugging away the bitterness and the fluttering swarm of butterflies in her stomach after hearing that. "Now take this ticket and bring Krillin back to life."

"W-Wait… What will happen if Chayote dies?" Goku grabbed Chayote's arm by the elbow and didn't allow her to hand the ticket over.

"Well… It's tough to say for certain. She was supposed to go to Heaven when she died originally. If she is still deserving of going there, and if the Heaven's all fixed up now, that's where she'll go but… She might just end up as a spirit sent off to Hell, or, more likely since she wasn't all that evil, to begin with, she'll go into the recycling machine and get reincarnated. One thing's for certain, the blue-face guy won't be giving out any more freebies!" Baba explained.

"Are you sure you wanna go through with this?" Goku looked up. "We can always bring Krillin back with the Dragon Balls… Krillin isn't going into the recucking machine, is he?"

"Recycling machine… No. I'm afraid his fate is much darker. His spirit is left to wander limbo forever, unable to find peace in either Heaven or penance in Hell. That's because he's been killed by a demon of the Evil Tribe." Baba explained. "In this case, I suppose, you'd find such an outcome favorable, given that you have ample time to resurrect him since reincarnation isn't in the plans for him. In fact, so to speak, you've got all the time in the world to do so…" the old crone chuckled with a crooked smile.

"Whatever… Bring Krillin back now!" Chayote insisted, slipping her arm out of Goku's grip and handing the ticket to Baba.

"Well… If you insist…" Baba directed a beady stare at Chayote, still maintaining the chilling smile of very few pearly whites to rest one's eyes on in her mouth. "Upa! Start up the passageway, we're bringing a soul back!" she yelled at the back of the palace.

"Yes, ma'am!" Upa ran out of the cover with a tomahawk nearly his own size in hand. The boy began chanting something that was hard to understand before striking the empty space in between the gateway frame. The sky around the Fortuneteller Baba palace turned dark and stormy, a couple of crackles preceded a mighty jolt that enveloped Upa's tomahawk and appeared to spark life into the passageway.

"If you still haven't changed your mind, through here…" Baba smirked gesturing at the portal. The old crone took great pleasure in seeing just how far the two Saiyans were determined to go and how well they'd deal with the hesitation smoldering inside both of their chests about what they were doing.

"Chayote, you haven't taken off yet?" Upa looked up at Chayote.

"Just got a couple of things I need to do before then…" Chayote tilted her chin, greeting her old friend and answering his question at the same time.

"You may follow me this time. Soon enough you might need to tread those endless hallways yourself so it's about time you get introduced to those damned ogres and the big boys up above." Baba gleamed her eyes at Upa.

"R-Really? I can meet the Gods stronger than the God of Korin Tower themselves!?" Upa's jaw dropped in awe.

"Yeah, let's go, kid, knock yourself out and burst your bubble…" Baba sighed and led Chayote and Goku through the azure passageway, prompting Upa to rush after them. It didn't take long for the passageway to close down behind them and remain as just an empty doorframe.


	61. Troublesome Lifelinks Explained

A plump and battered man flew over the edge of the Korin Tower and landed face-first onto Korin's Temple. By the time that Yamcha arrived at the tower and climbed it, while still holding Tenshinhan and Yajirobe on him, the swordsman of the prairie had regained consciousness but he was too hungry to do much about it. Even when he landed on something resembling solid floor Yajirobe just peeled his face off the floor and looked around, lacking the strength to examine or take anything he liked.

"Yamcha, isn't it?" Korin approached the trio while Yamcha stopped and bent over on his knees to catch his breath. He did after all just fight Demon King Piccolo and climb the Korin Tower with two passengers, one of whom was Yajirobe.

"Hey, Korin-sama, I'm afraid we've run out of Senzu out there. Things kind of gone out of hand…" Yamcha tried to explain but he wasn't sure where to even start. Both Krillin and Yamcha have used some of their Senzu even during the World Martial Arts Tournament and that was before the whole King Piccolo mess started. "We need some more, it's an emergency really."

"Who are these two though?" Korin bent his head to the side in curiosity while examining the almost naked Yajirobe sitting on his knees and looking around frantically, hungry for just about everything he set his eyes upon but lacking the strength to pick anything up.

"That's Tenshinhan. He's someone we've met at the tournament, don't worry about him, he's a great hero. He killed Demon King Piccolo." Yamcha pointed at Tenshinhan's panting body with an assuring expression.

"I see…" Korin stroke his chin, something about that revelation really tipped him off the wrong way. He was contemplating something heavy but that was Korin. "And this one?" he pointed at Yajirobe.

"Oh, he's just a guy we almost killed by accident. I think he's pretty strong too, he might have been the one to off one of King Piccolo's spawns and Tenshinhan nearly killed him when he blasted the prairie to eradicate the Demon King." Yamcha shrugged. "He's some sort of a hobo, I think, but we owe him food, at least."

"Yer a cat, ain'tcha?" Yajirobe grumbled. "Give me some 'a yer fish and we'll be square!"

"Square? What exactly are we to be square for?" Korin scratched his head, confused about the whole thing. He was not fond of having to rely on Yamcha to brief him in on things but he's seen plenty of interesting things happening all at once down on Earth after a prolonged period of nothing of interest happening.

"If you have some fish, we'd kindly request you give him some so he can just scram already. I felt bad about hurting him and leaving him…" Yamcha clapped his hands and bowed in front of Korin.

"Well…" Korin stroke his chin, content with the respect Yamcha showed him. "I do have some fish but I've cooked that for myself." The white cat pulled on his lower eyelid and showed his tongue.

"P-Please, Korin-sama…" Yamcha leaned back, shocked by his mentor's cold heart. "He's not a noble hero like Tenshinhan but… He does deserve some nursing back to health, at least. We can't just dump him off the tower."

"That's not what I meant…" Korin shook his head and moved to one of his wooden lids. He picked up a handful of magic beans and approached Yajirobe, handing him some. "I meant that fish won't help his trouble now. He needs Senzu."

"Beans!?" Yajirobe growled. "Figured you'd be short on food… Shoulda figured you'd screw me over!"

The chubby samurai grabbed the beans off of the cat's hands and stuffed his face full of them. Had Korin the ability to go pale beyond the white color of his fur, he'd have surely reflected the shortage of blood that his body struggled with when he saw the idiot stuff his face with a handful of bean meant to represent ten days-worth of food.

"That was your entire reward, glutton!" Korin smacked Yajirobe on the head with his cane when the plumpy began moaning and rolling around the temple with his hands on his belly, crying over the tension in his stomach from the excess of food he had ingested. "You cannot kill yourself by eating too many Senzu, but you will feel every bit of pain that ingesting that amount of food would cause you without the sweet release of death. I think that's a fitting punishment for stuffing your face full before I could explain what Senzu are."

Korin jumped up and snagged the empty satchel tied to Yamcha's belt and refilled it from a wooden barrel by his side. He did not forgive Tenshinhan either, flicking him a bean for his troubles before slumping back to Yamcha and handing him the satchel.

"You better be careful. These aren't infinite, you know. The harvest was quite puny this year and the farmer that grows them is worried they won't grow at all in the nearest future, meaning that what I've got in these barrels will be all there is." Korin lectured Yamcha, smacking him on the head with his cane as well. Yamcha bowed as if replying for the painful lump on the back of his head with gratefulness.

"I know, Korin-sama, it was a very unusual emergency with the resurrection of the Demon King Piccolo, however. Krillin is dead…" Yamcha scratched his stomach as if it might have eased the rumbling sadness deep down. "Your training didn't fail him. He gave a great fight to the spawn of the Demon King but… He was tricked."

"I see…" Korin stroke his chin. "So then that's it, no more returning for Krillin…"

"What do you mean with that?" Yamcha stepped back with a horrified expression while Tenshinhan stood up and checked his wrists. Korin's declaration forced Tenshinhan to cease his warm-ups and rounds of shadow boxing to direct all of the attention to the short, white cat.

"No. Krillin will return. Muten Roshi and the rest are collecting the Dragon Balls as we speak. Truth be told, I wonder if the Divine Dragon will make their wish come true if the Demon King Piccolo is dead already when they ask for that wish…" Tenshinhan tried correcting the feline martial arts master who only licked his paw with frightening indifference.

"Of course, if the Divine Dragon cannot fulfill a wish, he will inform the gatherer of the Dragon Balls and ask them to make a different wish," Korin replied before turning straight at the pair of martial artists with a stare of his closed eyes that seemed to wash them with boiling water even though they couldn't meet the cat's eyes directly. "It won't do any good if the Dragon Balls are inert."

"I-Inert!?" Yamcha shook his head in disbelief. "What do you mean, why would they be inert!?"

"I've sensed the Ki of the Demon King disappear a while ago. I tried contacting the attendant of the God of the Korin Tower but that was to no avail. I'm afraid that the God of Korin Tower might have died together with Demon King Piccolo." Korin sighed.

"What!?" Tenshinhan and Yamcha uttered in unison, taken aback by this declaration.

"You see, the God of the Korin Tower and Demon King Piccolo are one and the same, so to speak. Long ago, when the God of the Korin Tower was being tested for the position, he had to remove his heart of any ounce of evil, and so he did, creating the Demon King Piccolo. Despite being two separate beings, they share a life link. If one dies, so does the other. Unfortunately for you, the God of the Korin Tower is the creator of the Dragon Balls and the Divine Dragon is linked to his life as well." Korin explained.

"Gods and some balls 'a dragons… What bullshit…" Yajirobe picked himself up and stared at the trio of Yamcha, Tenshinhan and Korin. While the first pair still tried to process the news they had just found out, Korin seemed more curious about what it would be that Yajirobe would do. "I'll be eatin' that fish now, cat…" Yajirobe declared.

"You may try…" Korin nodded. "If you can get your hands on it, it means you deserve it…"

Yajirobe charged forward with notable speed for someone of his size and build but Korin swung his cane right in front of him, frightening Yajirobe as the cane ended up just barely missing his face. The swordsman of the prairie stumbled back, losing all sense of balance before falling on his butt again.

"It would be pointless to try and eat it now, it's still cooking. The air up here is very rare so it takes forever for a fire to get rolling and for the fish to cook…" Korin informed the swordsman who just crossed his legs and turned away, determined to rob the cat blind of all of his food before he left this tower. The journey back home would be a protracted one, after all.

"No, you're wrong!" Tenshinhan declared out of the blue, addressing Korin. "Goku and Chayote, they've gone to Fortuneteller Baba, they're going to cash in the Free Return Ticket for Krillin."

"That's right, knowing it's Goku and Chayote… Those two will definitely not fail!" Yamcha smiled as a refreshing wave of relief washed over his aching and weary back.

"A Free Return Ticket, huh? Yes… I do recall Baba winning something like that in Bingo… In that case, maybe the brat will still make a comeback… That's a relief indeed, being trapped in limbo for eternity is a poor fate for a talented young lad like him." Korin nodded and turned to walk deeper into the lower floor of his temple where he was cooking some food.

"Ey, wait up! I'm gonna eat everythin' ya got for that ripoff!" Yajirobe yelled and jumped on his feet, rushing after Korin, scaring everyone atop at the Korin Temple that his loincloth would soon fall off, exposing the untold, greasy horrors contained underneath it.

* * *

Bulma knocked hard on the door of a small house in a remote village on the western continent. The house was pretty much lifting off the ground and flipping over from the ruckus that it contained within. One step at a time, Bulma took subtle skids back to avoid the inevitable outrage of whoever would open the door as it was damn near impossible they'd be in a good mood with this atmosphere surrounding them around the house.

"Do you think you even need to knock? Listen to this place…" Oolong wrapped his arms over his chest and squinted at Bulma's decision to pick such a civil method to try and speak to the inhabitants of the small residential home about the Dragon Ball in their possession.

"What would you suggest!?" Bulma reared her teeth at the anthropomorphic pig and rolled back her sleeve, preparing to pound him again for speaking to her in such a tone and being an all-around insufferable swine.

"Let me handle it…" Launch cocked her gun and kicked at the door, firing a couple of series of bullets into the air before Chiaotzu and Muten Roshi could stop her. "Hey! Come outta there and talk to us, you worthless scum bastards!"

"I can't believe I didn't see this coming…" Muten Roshi slapped his forehead and shook his head. "From her, of all people…"

"Sometimes she's such a nice lady but… Then she's sort of scary…" Chiaotzu's mouth quivered as he floated a bit farther away from the rampaging blonde who was laying some serious foot-based smackdown on the door of the house where some people resided who were meant to give them their Dragon Ball.

"When Launch-san's hair is blue – she's okay and when it's yellow – she's scary!" Puar explained it to Chiaotzu before the door slammed open and a woman of curly, afro-like purple hair burst forth and laid Launch out with a pair of precise chops to the neck, a kick to her shins and a punch to the gut, all delivered lightning-fast.

"This woman's a martial artist, let me handle it!" Chiaotzu moved out in front of the rest of the group with his fingers pointed at her, ready to paralyze her.

"W-Wait… Chiaotzu…" Muten Roshi slurred with love-struck eyes. "This is Ranfan-chan!"

Chiaotzu avoided a flurry of blows from the female combatant which she directed at him for stepping out in front of the rest of the group and preparing for what she considered a martial arts technique. The ghoulish martial artist lowered his head down and dived right at his opponent like a living drill, sending her down with a screech. It was only then that Chiaotzu registered what Muten Roshi told him.

"Ran-chan… Who's that?" a man of shoulder-long periwinkle hair and a thick stubble approached Ranfan from behind and helped her back on her feet.

"Trouble…" she grunted while wiping the blood off of her lip.

"No, please!" Bulma ran out, trying to pacify the situation. "This is all just a big misunderstanding, we're not here to cause trouble at all."

Launch let the magazine slip from her gun for a visual inspection, she then slid it back and cocked her gun again. "I'm still good for some trouble!" she grinned.

"Who are you, horrible people? Why are you harassing my wife, is it because of her martial arts background? About that tournament? She's leaving it all behind so you can move on!" the man stepped out in front of his wife and began arguing with the Dragon Team in her defense.

"T-Trunks…" Ranfan muttered, flattered by the gesture of her husband. It was then that she regained some of her vitality and jumped out in front of him, moving her husband behind her with a push of her arm. "Get behind me, these guys are trouble and you're no martial artist. Let me handle it. This is what I meant, this is why I can't just leave it all behind and become a housewife as you wanted!"

"No, you can totally do that!" Bulma shook her hands, still hopeful that the situation could have been defused. "Do whatever you want, honestly, we're just here for the Dragon Ball you have found, look, the radar shows it to be in your home. We wanted to ask you for that and we're going to leave you guys alone after we've secured it."

"Probably should have opened with that and not a hail of bullets, you know!" Trunks, Ranfan's husband, answered clearly disgruntled by the violent approach of the Dragon Team.

"That is… A very good observation, in any case, you've been really loud and we needed to get your attention. Getting this Dragon Ball is of great importance to us, the entire world may go to waste otherwise." Bulma nodded a pair of times before insisting further.

"Sorry, my husband and I were having a quarrel. He doesn't want me fighting anymore… I'm okay being a mother and a housewife but… I'm not sure I want to leave fighting behind me altogether…" Ranfan put a finger to her lush, beaming red lips that complimented the overly heavy make-up she wore on a casual day while working in the kitchen. Even her skin was powdered snow-white to make the contrast of her mole stand out in a visually appealing manner.

"I wonder why… She tried stripping in front of Goku and teasing him when she couldn't cut it…" Oolong leaned to Muten Roshi while the two cringed together, only to freeze in place when Bulma's wayward stare full of rage made them jump and tense up.

"I'm okay with you fighting, it's just… Can you maybe do something about your fighting style?" Trunks tried reasoning with his wife but Bulma stepped in between the two of them, she wanted to regain all the goodwill that the Dragon Team had squandered with their gung-ho approach but she had no time to sit through a family quarrel in order to obtain the Dragon Ball, especially when Yamcha didn't answer any attempts to reach him and must have by now settled matters with Demon King Piccolo.

"Please, we just need a small, orange, crystal sphere with stars on it, one like these…" Bulma showed the feuding pair the triplet of their Dragon Balls.

"Oh, I've found it last week when tending the lawn, I thought it was some decorative leftover from a celebration or something so I tossed it over my shoulder…" Trunks shrugged.

"That… That can't be… The radar shows it to be still in the vicinity, it must be inside that house, the zoom function won't even let me zoom in any further…" Bulma checked her radar readings again.

"Yes, I've found it in our garden while gathering the herbs…" Ranfan gasped as her memory cleared up. "My husband is the man I love but he is sometimes quite a wimp, he must not have tossed it hard enough to go over the fence. I found it and asked him if he dropped it and he told me it's garbage so it must still be in the trash can."

The Dragon Team cheered about their lucky break. "Can we please have it?" Muten Roshi inquired, approaching Ranfan and making blood freeze inside Bulma's veins when she realized the sort of vile things that might have been going through the old pervert's head as he approached the woman who held the Dragon Ball and might have chosen to just not give it to them. While Launch might have always been up for some casual burglary, her forms were too unreliable to incorporate into any worthwhile plan.

"Sure, it's in the trash bags in the kitchen, please take a look…" Ranfan invited the team inside. The bunch all looked at each other with awkward stares, everyone wondering who would be the first one to show initiative and everyone relying on somebody else to check the trash bags.

"No way, I'm not burrowing through garbage!" Bulma shook her head. "I thought we've established that!"

"Rock, Paper, Scissors?" Muten Roshi suggested.

* * *

"I feel… Unclean…" Bulma chattered with her teeth even while the jet provided ample heating even for the cloud-reaching heights the Dragon Team soared through. "If it wasn't for Yamcha I'd have…" Bulma belched.

"You better believe it we're not gonna let you and your boyfriend forget it!" Oolong chuckled into his tiny hands only to freeze in place when Bulma's twitching head slowly turned to him. The four Dragon Balls laid out on a soft blanket and placed into a blue and white bag fell out and scattered all over the hull of the aircraft.

"B-Bulma-san, please focus on driving!" Muten Roshi reasoned with the blue-haired, prone to fits of rage genius. "We'll handle Oolong's long tongue…" he pleaded.

The jet soared on ahead, blasting off into the distance, nearing the completion of the Dragon Team's quest with each landing. While an unfavorable switch of Launch's forms did provide them with more challenge than most actual possessors of the Dragon Balls, so far, the Dragon Team managed to leave even those few challenges behind.


	62. The Weird Hen

A body of a tanned martial artist wrapped in yellow cloth flew past multiple rows of his disciples and slammed into a large Buddhist statue. King Chappa fell down on his bottom and looked up at the ghoulish, pale boy floating up in front of him with a submissive stare as he knew that he no longer had the stamina to get back up nor the will to fight this mysterious opponent.

"King Chappa! They beat King Chappa!" a rustle spread amongst the disciples, inviting the honored martial artist to then rise back on his feet and wipe the blood drooling off over his lush beard.

"You've cheated. This was no honorable martial arts fight!" King Chappa declared. "I cannot allow some mystical cheater to claim the gem that the Bodhichapati holds in his eight arms!" the martial artist pointed back at the massive statue looming behind him that he had just slammed into and left some cracks by the statue's knees. Cradled in all eight of the hands of the divinity that the statue portrayed was a Dragon Ball.

"This is total rubbish! You got beat and you know it!" Bulma pointed at King Chappa with an accusatory tone. "Now hold your part of the deal and hand us the Dragon Ball!" she demanded perhaps a little bit abusing the welcome that the monastery in which King Chappa raised and trained his pupils as well as performed his spiritual duties showed the Dragon Team.

"Was it just because I used my telekinesis to fight?" Chiaotzu bent his head to the side like a curious puppy. His lips swirled like a boiled string of pasta as he had blamed himself for the fact that the Dragon Team lost out on the opportunity to obtain their fifth Dragon Ball. "Because I can fight without it…"

"You foul monster! Look at you floating over the ground, you'd still cheat as you're doing right now!" one of the monks appeared to buy into King Chappa's hogwash, displaying himself as quite the trustworthy piece of ragged cloth for his master.

"B-But that's how I normally walk…" Chiaotzu leaned back in mid-air, landing on the floor and trying to get used to walking around normally. Judging from his unnatural movements down on the floor, he'd be at a great disadvantage fighting this way.

"Forget it…" King Chappa said. "This is pointless anyway. Now that you've weakened me with your foul mystical powers I could never fight you fairly as this competition demands it. Begone from my monastery and feel glad that you were shown the welcome you've experienced here."

"I still don't understand why I didn't get to fight…" Muten Roshi scratched his bald head. "I don't float and I could have given you more than you've bargained…"

King Chappa turned to Muten Roshi with a square look but did not reply, likely because he couldn't word his worry over confronting the world-renowned Muten Roshi in a martial arts competition over a Dragon Ball to make himself sound honorable in front of his students.

"Do you have anything useful to add?" Bulma turned to Launch who just gasped, in her blue-haired form.

"M-Me? Oh my… I… I'm not a fighter… Gee… I don't even…" she gulped and panted in anxiety over being spoken to by another human being.

"You must understand, if we don't get our hands on this Dragon Ball, the whole world will be in trouble!" Puar floated over to King Chappa who just crossed his arms over his chest and stared up at the floating kitten with a swollen left eye at the spot where Chiaotzu kicked him during their short scuffle. "Demon King Piccolo intends to kill all martial artists and take over the world as he's done in the past!"

"I have heard of this Demon King you speak of. He was sealed into a rice cooker, everybody knows that!" King Chappa dismissed Puar's attempts at reasoning with him. "You're just trying to frighten me into giving you the gem and that will simply never happen. The martial artists of this monastery will not be frightened by any enemy."

"I'm surprised you even know what a rice cooker is…" Bulma crossed her own arms and looked away with a pout, she was just inches away from growling and clawing at this annoying poser's face. He was a respected martial artist and a powerful one too, but now, in the face of adversity he couldn't measure up to, he was acting like a real diva.

"Of course we know what a rice cooker is, all of the generous donations of the village go toward the Rice Cooker Fund, one day we will have a rice cooker of our own to cook our rice in!" one of the monks declared proudly for all to hear, a few of the monks cheered on the bold declaration of the monk.

"Oh? And what if we gave you a rice cooker for that Dragon Ball? I have a capsule with one…" Bulma began burrowing in her case of capsules. "Can you seal Demon King Piccolo into something else than a rice cooker, if need be?" she wondered, looking at Muten Roshi.

"Yes. A jar, a pot… Just about anything of a similar shape." Muten Roshi nodded.

"Don't even bother! What would be the point of a rice cooker if we didn't earn it ourselves? How can we taste the bland and ascetic texture of boiled, white rice if we didn't bust our nails and break our fingers collecting scraps to afford it!?" the monk declared, yelling at Bulma as if he was talking to an ignorant foreigner who insulted their beliefs.

"Ugh! I can't believe it!" Bulma ground her teeth.

"Ooooh!" a rumbling moan resonated through the monastery, all of the monks turned their attention to the statue while King Chappa took a leap backward, taking a fighting stance to confront this mysterious moaner. A massive hand reached out from behind the statue, then another and another, until a grand total of eight hands appeared from behind the statue and helped a living avatar of the divinity that the statue portrayed emerge from behind.

"Oh my!" Launch gasped. "Let's run away, has anybody seen Oolong!?"

"Ooooh!" the divinity moaned again as if it had just awoken from a deep slumber and pointed one of its index fingers at King Chappa. "I, Bodhichattarmalatti have woken from my slumber after hearing you deny these humble travelers this gem! Have you not heard that they need it to save the world? I, Bodhiservelatti, am very disappointed in you, my disciples!"

King Chappa leaped up and drove his palm into the core of the looming divinity, sending it crashing down on the floor in a cloud of smoke as dust of the monastery and the natural smoke that accompanied Oolong's transformation, expanded into a much more massive cloud now that the shapeshifting piglet attempted to transform into something so massive, spread throughout the hallowed halls of the monastery.

"You dare besmirch the name of our spiritual leader, Bodhichapati, impersonating him without even speaking his name right? There is no honor amongst you knaves, begone from this monastery at once!" King Chappa clutched his fist in front of himself and growled.

"You're the one who has no honor, you…" Bulma let the anger boiling inside her free all at once, sadly she did not have the opportunity to complete her declaration of what exactly she thought King Chappa to be, in her opinion, for a subtle and wet sneeze interrupted her. Normally, Bulma would not be the one to be interrupted by a mere sneeze but, given the full knowledge of whom she fostered in her group, it was a sound she had learned to dread even when woken up in the middle of the night.

"Yer welcome," Launch smirked at the rest of the group as she played around with an automated pistol that she rolled around in her hand, once in a while she stopped her playing and clutched her fingers around the handle and took aim at some blank spot before snickering to herself and resuming her spinning routine.

"We are very grateful that you helped us get that Dragon Ball, Launch-chan but… Were the hand grenades really necessary?" Muten Roshi scratched his sweating, bald head.

"It was really dangerous for Launch-san to lash out like that, King Chappa is a formidable martial artist, he might have hurt you…" Chiaotzu pointed out.

"That's why you two were there, to soften 'em up for me!" Launch smirked.

"Plus, it's not like that insufferable buffoon would have started any trouble with Muten Roshi around, he was really frightened the whole way through…" Bulma smirked and let her bag slip off of her shoulders only to gaze into the ever-increasing load she carried around which resided inside.

"So, Bulma, where's the next Dragon Ball?" Oolong sent a wayward look Bulma's way.

"Oh… Let's see…" Bulma pulled out her radar and zoomed in. "Huh… It seems to be underwater, I think… No… Wait… It's moving, yes, definitely moving slowly towards the east in the North Ocean."

"The North Ocean, huh?" Oolong sighed. "That seems like it's going to be a hassle, really cold and we'll need a pretty strong gadget to have our jet break through the ice and insulate us down under. Maybe let's snag the other ball now and leave this one for the last?"

"No. If this Dragon Ball has already been found, we are best to obtain it as soon as we can. If it's been found by somebody who's not Demon King Piccolo, we cannot trust that it will be safe in their hands, if it's been found by Demon King indeed… Things will get complicated." Muten Roshi spoke in a husky tone, oppressed by the weight of the possibility that the Demon King might have had a Dragon Ball making the task of collecting all seven infinitely more dangerous.

* * *

"Hello, King Enma, we're here for a favor." Fortuneteller Baba declared as she floated up to the bottom of the massive table which King Enma sat behind, floating right past the line of disgruntled ogres about to hand in their work to their boss who just kept on stamping on sheets of paper, occasionally taking a breather to switch the stamp he would drive onto the document.

"Oh? You're back again? Haven't seen you in a wild… Hmmm… Is that Chayote!?" King Enma sat up in his chair, straightening his back and instantly beginning to sweat. "Please don't tell me that Chayote has died, this is a very, very bad time!"

"Oh? No, not for seven more years, at least…" Fortuneteller Baba chuckled. "We're here about a soul that has passed on into limbo. A young martial artist slain by a member of the Evil Tribe."

"Wha!? So this is the Otherworld!?" Goku looked around, displaying the befitting amazement of a child who's wandered into a place too grandiose for him to be there at the moment. "Everyone who dies comes through here!?"

"That's right, Goku-san." Upa nodded with a polite smile on his face. He's learned plenty about the Otherworld from Baba in the last couple of years of training but this was the first time that Chayote knew about that Baba allowed him to accompany her here. "Everybody, usually they don't get to keep their body though, those right there are the souls lined up to be processed by King Enma and directed to Heaven or Hell. Those that don't deserve Heaven get sent to Hell where they must redeem their sins until King Enma chooses to reincarnate them in the machine."

"Can you two can it for a little bit? I'm trying to concentrate here…" King Enma grumbled while flipping through pages of a book as thick as Baba if she sat atop of Chayote's shoulders. "Ah, yes… A more recent victim, it seems. Not too many of those, I've expected a lot more, given that troublesome guy. You'd wonder why Earth has a guardian, to begin with, huh?"

"You know how Kami-sama is with Demon King Piccolo…" Baba mumbled. "It's not like something can be done."

"Huh? Is that Demon King Piccolo guy really that much of a problem? Maybe we should go beat him up right after this?" Goku contemplated out loud.

"Under no circumstances. Two little monsters like you would end up killing him and that cannot be allowed to happen." Fortuneteller Baba turned toward the pair.

"Wait, you're saying we can't kill him?" Chayote scratched her head. "Why not?"

"Well… It's tough to explain, it would fly right over the heads of you two so just trust me and don't do it!" Fortuneteller Baba shook her fist over her head. Chayote just shrugged.

"If he tried hurting Krillin again, or anybody else, I'm going to knock him out!" Goku declared. "It's his problem if he can take it or not."

"See what we're dealing with on a daily basis down there?" Fortuneteller Baba sighed with a look at King Enma that may as well have demanded to be mercy-killed.

"Hmmm… Yes… Well… You are aware of the grave circumstances of anything at all going wrong, right? If Demon King Piccolo dies, if Chayote dies… It would thusly be for the best if the two stayed clear of one another…" King Enma suggested. "Now, about that limbo-guy. What do you want to do with him?"

Chayote jumped onto King Enma's table, making Fortuneteller Baba's jaw drop that her own student would act so carelessly and rude toward the king of all ogres. Chayote pulled out the Free Return Ticket from her coat pocket and handed it to King Enma.

"I want Krillin to come back to life using this." Chayote declared.

"Huh? You had this thing with you all along and you're using it on some Earthling? That's… You do know that if you die and Zeno-sama realizes… Our entire universe will go to waste…" King Enma stroke his sweating forehead.

"Hmmm… You were right… I've got no idea whatsoever about what's going on…" Goku complained after looking at Upa.

"Chayote is a very special kind of Saiyan. She has a very rare type of cells within her blood which makes her a very valuable person, she gives our universe a higher score and… Let's just say we need to have a high score. If Chayote would ever die… Well… Our universe would become endangered." Upa tried explaining it to Goku in terms he could understand.

"Wow! Chayote's a person like that!?" Goku yelled out in shock. "No wonder she's so strong!"

"Hmm? No, by Saiyan standards Chayote would actually be someone considered "low-class", it's not that she's exceptionally talented or that her genes make her a freak of strength, it's more that cells like hers are very rare. In fact, Saiyans like that are only born once in a thousand or so years and, right now, our universe is lucky to have two of them." King Enma joined in on the explanation. "For that reason alone, our universe is currently safe from too harsh of scrutiny."

King Enma took the ticket from Chayote's hand and tore it to pieces. Chayote's jaw dropped as her eyebrows began to twitch, she had thought that the king of ogres had just destroyed the ticket but then the ogre king stood up and began going through sheets of documents inside his drawers. King Enma slammed a pile and began browsing through it, picking up his telephone and ringing up a number he noticed on one of the sheets.

"Yes… Hen-san, I'd like to see you in my office. Yes, right now, please…" King Enma spoke before hanging up and weaving his fingers together. After a few moments, the king of ogres began tapping his table and whistling a delightful tune.

"Ummm…" Chayote raised her finger, about to inquire what was going on but King Enma jumped off his seat.

"Get off my table, mortal and wait until Hen-san gets here!" he yelled out and Chayote followed his orders despite being a little bit lost.

"Who's Hen-san?" Chayote looked to Fortuneteller Baba.

"He handles limbo. You see, limbo is technically located on the earthly realm, think of it as another dimension, it's a place from which ghosts appear before mortals, that's how thin the lines between the two are." Fortuneteller Baba explained.

"Ah… I see…" Goku hammered his palm with his fist.

"You didn't understand thing Baba said, did you?" Upa looked at Goku with an inquisitive stare. Goku laughed out and leaned back on his arms bent behind his head and shook his head.

Just a few moments later, an odd rumbling noise as if a roar of a very puny engine came from somewhere remote, Chayote and Goku ran up to the long line leading up to King Enma's Check-In Station all the way from the beginning of the line. They peeked through the exit and the line of souls queued up to witness a red scooter burst forth from the yellow clouds underneath and jump onto the line, slowly fumbling around the souls and carrying a puny ogre with glasses and clad in a leather bodysuit roll up to the Check-In Station only to perform a skid with his back wheel in front of King Enma's table and raise his hand up, as if his pathetic scooter skid was in any shape or form meant to be cool.

"Yo!" the ogre Hen muttered. "I'm Hen."

"Hen-san, you have a soul in your possession, a young boy named Krillin, Fortuneteller Baba's apprentice would like to cash in her Free Return Ticket to bring that boy back to life." King Enma explained.

"Oh… That's how it is… Well…" Hen jumped off of his scooter and let its handle slam down on the floor while he ran up to the folks with a slow jog and grabbed the top zipper of his bodysuit. Before anyone could demand that Hen would not do whatever perverted deed he had in mind, Hen unzipped it and opened the leather bodysuit up, exposing a whirly and very mind-bending view of shifting dimensions located underneath his bodysuit. Hen leaned down and stuffed his head inside the kaleidoscope-like dimensional shifts.

"Krillin! Is there a Krillin in there!" he yelled out. Something must have answered for the slim ogre stuffed its hand inside the rift underneath his bodysuit and pulled a bald boy out by his collar and then placed him onto the floor of King Enma's office right in front of everybody before zipping his bodysuit back up.

"There he is, Krillin, thank you very much!" he yelled out and hopped onto his scooter before blitzing in full thirty-five kilos per hour around the queue of souls and taking a rather sad-looking nosedive into the yellow clouds underneath.

"W-We were meant to be thanking him, I think…" Upa scratched his cheek, bewildered by what he had just seen while both Goku, Chayote, and Krillin were still getting accustomed to their reunion.


	63. To the God's Temple

Korin hopped over Yajirobe's diving grab and tapped both of his feet over his head, pushing the wandering swordsman to plant down on the ground with his face, only to rise back up on his feet, rubbing the swollen pancake and wiping faint traces of blood off of his nose.

"So I'm going to need you two to ascend this tower to the very top…" Korin exclaimed out of the blue while Yajirobe had been gathering his strength for another shot at the white cat and its fish that it has been nibbling on. Time was a factor for Korin was reducing the fish into bones at an alarming rate for his meek size.

"What do you mean?" Yamcha wondered. "Isn't your temple the top of the Korin Tower?"

"Oh, no…" Korin chuckled up. "This temple is just a testing ground, in a way. Those that climb up here with their own two hands might receive my training, get a few of my excellent gifts and then scram, having their minds blown but perfectly content for the rest of their days."

"Excellent gifts? All ye've given me was a bunch 'a beans!" Yajirobe shook his fist, a rude sentiment for which he received a knock on his head from Korin's hammer-shaped staff.

"Would it kill you to be a little bit nicer? Anyway, those that I deem truly worthy to meet Earth's guardian, Kami, I grant one of these bells to." Korin withdrew a jingling set of bells from behind him and dangled them in front of Yamcha. The set of bells seemed familiar to the martial artist so he reached for behind his belt where he had his own pair stashed away. "Those that receive these bells, can then ascend to meet Kami himself. That being said, we can make an exception just this once for Tenshinhan, I suppose, since this is an emergency."

Tenshinhan bowed his head, grateful for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and then looked up at Korin. "Emergency?" he wondered.

"That's right. I usually have a communication line with Kami but in the excitement of the past few days, I was unable to reach him. Kami himself rarely answers so it would normally be of no surprise that I haven't seen his face in a while and a day but… Not even Mr. Popo, Kami's attendant answers, that is highly unusual. If something has happened to Kami, Demon King Piccolo is none of the world's worries…" Korin explained himself. "Earth must always have a Kami."

"If the Demon King has been killed, then Kami might have died as well, that's what you're worried about, correct?" Tenshinhan asked.

"Indeed…" Korin swiped his tail to the side to slap Yajirobe on the cheek, who tried to sneak up on the white cat on the cheek and send him falling down on his side, falling like timber.

"I've left my jet down with Bora. I can use the communications systems to reach out to Bulma and Roshi-san to find out if the Dragon Balls are still intact. If they're still active, that means that both the Demon King and Kami are alive." Yamcha suggested.

"Then we can ascend the tower and meet up with Kami, find out what he's been up to." Tenshinhan agreed. "But how will we get up there? I recall Yamcha saying that you can only scale this tower with your own two hands and it doesn't appear like there would be an extension to reach Kami climbing on."

"Normally, you would need the Nyoibou to connect the Korin Temple and God's Temple. However, if you fly using the flight technique, that would be fine too. Though if Kami is in trouble, he would be in no position to watch over your climb anyway…" Korin explained.

"I see… So that is why you've chosen Tenshinhan to accompany me, the worthy martial artist – he would be my transport up to the God's Temple…" Yamcha stroke his chin while he jested.

"I'm sure that someone as skilled as Kami-sama will see the injustice of the situation immediately and, if he's merciful, he will allow you to pick up scraps from my training." Tenshinhan bit back with a smirk on his face as well.

"Alright, alright… I wouldn't mind if you got to it already." Korin's image faded away, revealing him to only be an afterimage, one of many that scattered across the temple, making Yajirobe's head spin while he fell on his butt wheezing. Yajirobe may have had ample physical power, stamina and speed to compete with Korin but he didn't seem to be too used to moving around in such drastic altitude and it might take him a couple of days to get used to it, similarly to how it went with Yamcha and Krillin.

Without asking for permission, Tenshinhan grabbed Yamcha's collar and took off, taking his rival over the edge and swooping down to Bora's tent, where Yamcha had left his jet and where the martial artist could use it to contact Bulma and the rest of the Dragon Team. Bora ran out from his tent, his spear in hand the moment when he felt something picking up from above but his grip on his weapon eased when he saw Yamcha and Tenshinhan swoop down.

"Greetings, I've watched over your iron bird." Bora nodded and pointed at the jet. "Is your business with the God of the Korin Tower over already? I seem to recall there being three of you on the way up…"

"Oh, no, we've just landed to use the jet. Yajirobe stayed up there to train with Korin-sama while we use the jet. We're going to go up even higher, it seems…" Yamcha scratched his chest and nodded in acknowledgment of Bora before the pair rushed for the jet. After taking the front seat, Yamcha began adjusting some switches and working the tech on the jet to contact the Dragon Team while Tenshinhan stood to watch.

* * *

"How dare you take the loot that the Bearzoo Pirates have righteously stolen!?" a massive anthropomorphic bear in a pirate's robe and captain's hat and one working eye roared out. Captain Bearzoo of Bearzoo pirates pulled his sword and swung it around, grazing it dangerously close to his whited out left eye that carried a nasty scar over it that likely was the thing that put out the eye's vision permanently.

"Oh, we don't need all of the loot, Mr. Pirate, we just need the Dragon Ball…" Muten Roshi pointed at the Dragon Ball resting on a pile of golden coins, golden swords, and shields, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, plates of armor and helmets, even gold-coated food that laid scattered across the pile of treasure that spilled out of the dozens of chests that were meant to keep it contained.

"Speak for yourself, old man!" Launch cocked her gun and pointed it at the boar-pirates around her, some of whom were armed themselves while others wielded scimitars and growled at the group that just swooped out of the blue and landed on their ship before the Bearzoo Pirates could direct their cannons at them. "I'm gonna drag the last pants off 'a these guys!"

"Ya'll die, broad!" Captain Bearzoo roared while swinging his mighty blade, sending a concentrated airwave that split the deck of his own ship apart, forcing a bunch of the coin and golden loot to spill into the lower cabins of the ship from up above. Muten Roshi took a gentle leap to the side, avoiding the ship-splitting, ranged, cutting technique and hopped forward with a rather gentle roundhouse kick that sent Captain Bearzoo down for the count with both of his eyes whited out, though the right one was just rolled back and not blinded like the other one.

Launch opened fire from a pair of submachine guns at the oncoming outraged pirates while Chiaotzu used his telekinesis to stop the bullets that the pirates meant to return in mid-air. Before long, the pirates leaped into the over the board themselves to avoid the raging blonde and her ghoulish guardian, as well as the certainty of drowning as a couple of rockets that Launch had sent from a four-barrels rocket launcher she held in a capsule inside her bra, had finished the job so absent-mindedly stared by captain Bearzoo himself when he began wrecking the ship, dooming the vessel for the bottom of the North Ocean.

Puar swooped over the opening cracks in the ship's upper deck and picked up the Dragon Ball before it could roll into the crevice and become threatened to drown down under with the ship, further complicating securing the wish-fulfillment artifact. The Dragon Team hurried for their jet and took off, leaving the ship to drown.

"Damn those geezers, they've got some thick skin to take all those bullets…" Launch spat to her side. "Why are you such a wimp then?" she looked at Oolong who technically shared some semblance of similarity with the hogs of the Bearzoo Pirates due to being a pig himself.

"Excuse me? Not all pigs, thank you! So you're assuming that I can survive gunshots just because I'm a pig too? That's deeply offensive!" Oolong yelled back at Launch, not because he was bold enough to reply in the same tone he was spoken to but because the sky-scraping volume of the jet's flight forced him to.

"Can you two can it for a little bit, we're getting a transmission…" Bulma flipped a switch, letting a television screen lower from up above and let out a screen of static before the view filtered out to show Yamcha's face.

"It's Yamcha-san!" Puar cheered.

"An' Tenshinhan!" Launch pointed at the three-eyed baldy who occasionally looked at the screen from the side.

"I'm gonna kick you straight in the balls when I see you!" Bulma yelled at the screen, this time it was absolutely because she thought herself capable of speaking this way as the jet had evened out its flight path and was now sailing through the clouds as smooth as a swan. "You've gone silent for days! What's wrong with you!?"

"Everything's fine, Bulma. We were just a bit busy… We've confronted Demon King Piccolo and beat him. Tenshinhan tried destroying him with a Kikoho but… Tell me, Bulma, are the Dragon Balls okay?" Yamcha tried explaining everything that happened as soon as he could, the opportunity of meeting Kami himself atop of his temple and surpassing not only Tenshinhan but also Goku and Chayote seemed to excite him too much to take his time talking to his girlfriend.

"What!? You beat the Demon King!?" Muten Roshi drove his shoulder into Bulma's nearly shoving the blue-haired girl out of the driver's seat entirely. "That is unbelievable news indeed! Tenshinhan did you destroy the Demon King!?"

"That's what we're trying to find out, it's going to take too long to explain, Roshi-sama, please tell us if the Dragon Balls are active, it's important to know that," Tenshinhan answered.

"W-Well…" Bulma grunted while pushing Muten Roshi out of her way and getting the handle of the jet back in control, "We haven't collected them all just yet. We've just recovered the sixth and the seventh isn't too far away. The sixth was on a pirate ship in the North Ocean and the seventh is further north, in the Glacier Region."

"S-So… The Dragon Balls are active then?" Tenshinhan's face paled out with dread.

"H-Huh? Y-Yeah…" Bulma nodded, "What's all this about?"

"Shit…" Tenshinhan ground his teeth. "That means that the Demon King Piccolo escaped the blast range of my Kikoho somehow and survived. You guys need to be careful. He's old and weak now, plus, he couldn't have recovered from the injuries he sustained in such a short time so it's likely that Chiaotzu or Muten Roshi could take him as he is now but… Be careful."

The connection went out with a white blink that left the screen black and with a mechanical hum, the television screen rolled back up into a compartment over the front window of the jet. Bulma grit her teeth together and could just barely restrain her fury over being dismissed like that the first time Yamcha contacted her after such an emotional departure.

"I swear… The Dragon Balls are all he's thinking about!" she grumbled. "What was that all about!?"

"It's good news! Ten-san beat Demon King Piccolo!" Chiaotzu exclaimed.

"It is… But… The plan still hasn't changed. The Demon King Piccolo went into hiding and there's no way of finding him without Chayote or Baba's aid. Our best shot is still to collect the Dragon Balls and ask the Divine Dragon to destroy the Demon King now that he's weakened." Muten Roshi declared with a grim expression.

"What's the matter, Muten Roshi-san?" Chiaotzu wondered.

"It's… Something that those two implied… They understood that Demon King Piccolo is alive because the Dragon Balls are active, right? That means that they have somehow found out that if the Demon King was truly gone, the Dragon Balls would become inert. Likely permanently…" Muten Roshi stroked his beard.

"What?!" Bulma's jaw dropped. "How is that possible?!"

"I am not sure… One possible answer would be that the Dragon Balls were created by Demon King Piccolo himself and they were sustained through his magic alone. Who knows… Maybe the magic in the Dragon Balls is what allowed Demon King to survive Tenshinhan's blast? Anyway… This is not ideal but it is good news." Muten Roshi sighed.

"Ten-san used the Kikoho again…" Chiaotzu sighed.

"True, that was reckless of him, especially if the implication that he had already had Demon King Piccolo beat by then was true. Still, if there was one time to use the Kikoho and gamble with one's own life – it's against the Demon King himself…" Muten Roshi declared. "Let's move on for the seventh Dragon Ball and hope for the best."

Spiraling like an arrow, the jet drilled through the skies, propelling toward the final Dragon Ball in the set of seven, resting deep within the massive Glacial Region.

* * *

"Well… That won't end well…" Yamcha sighed, blowing out the full chest of air all at once. "Bulma's gonna kill me when we meet face-to-face, and just when we made-up too…"

"All the more reason to fly up to God's Temple and start training there," Tenshinhan smirked.

"We're not flying up there to train, remember, we're going up there to check up on Kami and find out why he's been vacant the past couple of days…" Yamcha reminded the overly excited rival of his. Even though Tenshinhan was burning up with a passion to train, Yamcha couldn't quite blame him for the same passion burned inside him too. This was his chance to not only catch up to Tenshinhan but also surpass him, training with Kami himself, training on the divine plateau of martial arts might just be the break he needed to make the gap between him and the rest disappear completely.

The two jumped out of the jet and Yamcha reduced it to a capsule and added it back into his case. There was no need to put Bora through the strain of watching over their "iron bird" anymore, especially if they would be gone on the God's Temple for a longer period of time if Kami truly agreed to train them as Korin's chosen. The worthy ones…

"You're leaving up there again?" Bora wondered.

"Yeah. All the way up this time…" Yamcha nodded.

"You… You guys haven't by any chance heard from my son, have you? He left a few years ago…" Bora asked.

"To learn from Fortuneteller Baba? Yeah, he became her apprentice. Last time we saw him in the tournament, he's grown some and adopted a new style, even got himself some fancy face-paint. He's truly morphing into an admirable young man." Yamcha nodded.

"Face paint? So he's gone this far ahead to earn himself face-paint… While my heart is sad I was not there to apply it myself, as a father, I could not be more proud!" Bora nodded with a rich smile on his face.

"Why don't you go and see him? Someone as tough as you could cover the distance in a week on foot or so…" Tenshinhan wondered.

"I cannot. I am the protector of the Sacred Land of Korin and Upa will be the protector after me." Bora declared and pounded his fist like a hammer against his chest. The fearsome tribal warrior was a sight to behold when he got worked up, Tenshinhan had to admit that much.

"Alright, we're sort of in a hurry, aren't we?" Tenshinhan nodded and grabbed hold of Yamcha's wrist. His feet left the ground slowly in the beginning but then the two began blasting off for real. It would have taken entire days to levitate up to Korin's Temple and past it normally so Tenshinhan had to truly kick it up a notch.

The journey up and through the heavens seemed almost infinite. It took at least fifteen minutes for Tenshinhan to cover the distance up to the and then past Korin's Temple and Yamcha had to hand it to him with how impressive that was but it appeared as if though their journey had still just begun. At some point, the martial artist stowaway could only wonder if the lack of breathable air so high up, the cold and the general aftereffects of such a speedy trip were worse compared to the endless shifting view of the skies. Yamcha couldn't even recall if he'd ever seen the ground and not the fading away layers of clouds when looking down…

"There it is, the temple!" Tenshinhan declared, forcing Yamcha to look up at the floating, ancient platform up above covered with colorful decorations of red, blue and marble-white. Recalling his initial climb up the Korin Tower, Yamcha wondered if Kami was truly observing and controlling those reaching out to his temple for he could recall taking more than a few thunderbolts on his first trip up the Korin Tower whereas now the trip seemed almost… Tranquil.

The place was completely silent, so much so that the gentle taps of Tenshinhan and Yamcha's boots touching the pristine white tiles of the temple seemed like it had resonated all throughout the place and through even their own bodies as all noise did when one's ears were clogged. Maybe it was just some nasty aftereffect of the thin atmosphere and the immense altitude but… There was an eerie atmosphere about the entire place that could not have been denied.

"You… Weren't whom I've been expecting…" a tall, slim and stumbling figure appeared from the doorway far ahead, past the gardens and the rows of trees, from the palace at the northern end of the platform.

"The Demon King!?" Yamcha took a few steps back.

"No, remember what Korin told us – they were once two and the same. The Ki of this man feels completely different somehow…" Tenshinhan stopped Yamcha from doing something stupid.

Kami, the guardian of Earth looked so weakened and drained of all semblance of life. Jolts of lightning occasionally left his body but this was no mere show of power for the electricity appeared to hurt Kami himself more than anyone else. Something was very wrong. Kami didn't look to be in any health whatsoever to watch over the world in his current state, he barely looked better than the Demon King looked when Tenshinhan tried destroying him once and for all.

Training indeed would have to wait.


	64. Return of the King

"Goku!" Krillin yelled out with teary eyes and a glistening smile on his face that only a return to life and removal from the previous obscurity would have provided one with. "It was so horrible, that monster guy did something to me and it was like nobody could see or talk to me. I was just floating around and… Nobody saw me…"

"You were stuck in Limbo, Limbo is a realm in between the living world and the Otherworld. In a way, you were stuck in between the two realms." King Enma picked his nose with his pinky while resting his heavy head onto a free arm of his.

"Are so many people killed by those Evil Tribe guys that you even made a separate realm for that?" Chayote wondered.

"No. Sometimes when a person dies, they have such a powerful will to live that they do not move on to the Otherworld. In those cases, they might restrain themselves in Limbo as well." Upa pointed out. Fortuneteller Baba turned back at the young brat with a smirk on her face, feeling a bit proud of her little protégé's knowledge.

"That's right, it's what you mortal folks call "ghosts"…" King Enma stared at a booger he rolled around in between his fingers for a while before flicking it away. "Either way, I need to get back to work and you guys are holding off the line. Unless you've got some other business, go home."

"You won't need to tell us that twice," Fortuneteller Baba sighed and began floating to the eastern section of the Check-In Station, followed by Upa. Goku, Chayote and Krillin stayed not too long behind Upa as well.

"That demon guy killed you, Krillin. Chayote won something called a Free Reburn Ticket and I'm not quite sure how it works but it brought you back to life." Goku tried explaining things to Krillin the best he could with his limited grasp on things. His excited emotional state didn't help things, the last time that Chayote saw the kid this excited was when he was about to leave to meet his grandpa in the Otherworld. Judging by how oblivious he was to some things, Baba didn't quite give him a tour. It was more than likely that what she did with arranging the meeting between the two wasn't entirely legal but that was Baba for you…

"Alright, Upa, beam us back home then…" Baba turned back to Upa.

"Keep your eyes peeled, Krillin, that's pretty awesome!" Goku turned to his resurrected friend who just nodded and then turned back to Chayote.

"Th-Thank you!" he mumbled. "Thanks for bringing me back to life."

"Yeah… Well… It's called the Free Return Ticket, for the record." Chayote shrugged and looked away, choosing not to confront the snot-inviting sentiments of the situation at hand. "And I didn't feel like waiting around until you get brought back to life using the Dragon Balls anyway. I've got a schedule and I've already stayed here longer than I wanted to."

After the trio left back to Baba's Palace using Upa's conjured doorway, Fortuneteller Baba turned to Chayote with a wayward look. A look that implied that Baba knew exactly what it would be that Chayote would choose to do in this situation but she wanted to make sure, in addition, she would have much more preferred that Chayote did not do that thing.

"So, now that Krillin is back home, there isn't anything keeping you to Earth, is there? You're going to leave, aren't you?" Fortuneteller Baba raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Chayote.

"Huh?" Krillin turned around.

"That's right… Although… I can still sense some wicked Ki far off in the distance to the North, I haven't got the faintest doubt that's the ringleader of the Evil Tribe gang." Chayote declared. "If you guys are going to go kill him, I wouldn't mind tagging along."

"Ch-Chayote!" Upa yelled out. "Didn't you hear a thing that was being discussed in the Otherworld? You cannot kill Demon King Piccolo without killing Kami-sama as well!"

"I intended to kill him with my own hands anyway, remember? This way I'd get to kill two guys I was always going to kill at once…" Chayote shrugged. "I'm sure that Kakarot agrees with me. Had it not been for the necessity to bring Krillin back to life, we'd have gone and killed him off the first chance we got."

"We're gonna knock him flying but we won't kill him." Goku declared with a determined expression. "We need to show him that he better not do anything bad ever again but we shouldn't kill Kami."

"What do you care? You've never even met the guy. The first thing he did when we met was have his boy-toy kick me off his tower." Chayote sighed and wrapped her arms over her chest in frustration. "Although this might be the last good fight I'll see in a while, I may as well see it through before leaving."

"Are you coming, Krillin?" Goku looked at his resurrected friend who just poked his fingers against one another. It was evident that he felt a bit cowardly about confronting the leader of the monster that killed him off but he didn't go pale nor did his feet quiver, meaning he wasn't completely lost yet.

"Y-Yeah… Though it might be better if you do the fighting, Goku. I don't think I'm quite on your level just yet…" Krillin looked away in embarrassment.

"Nonsense, you'd do just fine." Chayote tsked with her tongue and smacked Krillin against the shoulder. "The only reason you got done in was that you were looking out for somebody else and lowered your guard. Trust me, you're good. As long as you don't look out for anybody else but yourself…"

"Chayote…" Krillin muttered. "Th-Thanks…" he nodded. It wasn't too tough to see that he was about to tear up and start getting snotty again, Chayote made sure lift off before letting the atmosphere get moist like that. Who knew, she might have gotten let it go into her head and gotten teary-eyed too. That much couldn't have been permitted…

Without waiting for any special welcome, the trio blasted off into the distance, headed North to where Chayote picked up a weak signature of wickedness similar to that of Tambourine and the sniff of Demon King Piccolo that she's sensed earlier.

* * *

"It's a crisis to be certain…" Kami declared with a serious face, still clutching to his staff for support as even standing up straight seemed to be a difficult task in his current situation. "Not too long ago, I started feeling great pain, the eruption of some mystical energy burst from within me and every passing moment felt like dying."

"That must be when we've beaten Demon King Piccolo…" Tenshinhan turned to Yamcha.

"That was what Mr. Popo assumed as well. Knowing that monstrous fighters like Chayote are in this world, we did not think that in his current years and being as weakened as he was Demon King Piccolo would be that much of a challenge." Kami admitted.

"Well, it wasn't Chayote who beat him, it was us. Probably didn't need both of us, to be certain…" Yamcha bragged.

Kami closed his eyes, letting his body rest for a brief moment. It didn't appear as if he was dying at the moment, whatever crisis had befallen Demon King Piccolo and caused the great distress up in God's Temple must have been behind right now but he still wasn't anywhere near the appearance of a healthy guardian of a planet.

"I was ready to accept my end. It would have been only fitting. Something despicable and weak that I have done in my past catching up to me, ultimately… It was Mr. Popo who didn't want it ending this way. He just couldn't accept that it was my time already." Kami said.

"What do you mean by that?" Tenshinhan wondered.

"Long ago, when I was just in-training to become a guardian, my status was in question because I had great evil in my heart that I just couldn't get rid of, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I meditated on it. It was as if that taint was a fundamental part of me. The heart of the Earth's guardian must be pure, until I got rid of that rot, I could not have ascended… One day I… Got very frustrated with my lack of progress and… It just happened, I expelled all of my evil out, I created Demon King Piccolo by splitting him from my own being just so I could ascend. I should have let his demise be the end of it, it would have been right." Kami sighed.

"No, it would not have been." Tenshinhan shut the old deity down. "I've done a lot of questionable things in confusion as well. I was brought up as the successor to master Taopaipai, as the greatest assassin to succeed him. I've taken lives and swindled people, walked in the path of darkness and I never felt satisfied with it. That frustration caused me to shut into the wrong path for me even more. Become even fouler. Even when I realized my mistake and left Tsuru Sennin and Taopaipai's training behind, I was still surrounded by darkness and Chayote or Son Goku would have been in the right killing me. Though they've done something more remarkable, they've let me carry on and gave me a chance at redemption over everything I'd done. Had it not been for the chance that Fortuneteller Baba, Muten Roshi-sama, Son Goku and Chayote provided me with, I'd have remained lost and I do not accept that dying lost is ever just."

"Young man…" Kami muttered.

"Unless you feel like you've redeemed for unleashing Demon King Piccolo on the world, which, seeing that you wish to have died together with him, clearly you have not, you must live every passing day seeking redemption. That is true justice, only by purifying your heart from evil the right way can you make up for what ails you." Tenshinhan declared.

"Mr. Popo left to save Demon King Piccolo from being destroyed. I'm not quite sure what's going on with him but he must have recovered Demon King Piccolo before you could strike the finishing blow. Something's wrong though, if Mr. Popo rode off on his magical carpet, he should have been back with the Demon King about now…" Kami said, somewhat calmed down by Tenshinhan's feelings on the matter. He might have even agreed with the young man's wisdom that was far beyond his years as not even Kami with a fair share of the wisdom of his own couldn't have stumbled onto that answer on his own.

"You mean… Demon King Piccolo might have escaped!?" Yamcha blanked out.

"I'm not sure such a thing might be possible. Mr. Popo surpasses Demon King Piccolo in power even in his prime. Although, something might have gone wrong because Mr. Popo's hesitance to fight Demon King Piccolo…" Kami looked down, looking devastated that he allowed someone who was possibly the most hesitant being alive to fight the Demon King to confront him. He had little choice at the time nor did he have the power to stop him but that didn't mean that the guardian of Earth couldn't place that responsibility alongside everything else on his weakened shoulders.

"Would it be possible to sever the link between your life and that of the Demon King Piccolo using the Dragon Balls?" Tenshinhan looked up at Kami. "Our friends are currently working to collect them with the goal of destroying the Demon King…" only then did it dawn on Tenshinhan. With a blank expression, he turned to Yamcha who shared the worry with his rival and the two continued to stare at one another.

"We must leave, now!" Yamcha somehow found it within himself to mutter as the two turned around and dashed for the edge of the Temple, Yamcha launched himself off of it even if he couldn't fly. He trusted Tenshinhan to catch him and lower him back down to his jet and that was exactly what Tenshinhan did. It was excellent that they've communicated with Bulma and the Dragon Team before meaning they knew where they needed to head out to, still, Yamcha fumbled through the buttons to contact the Dragon Team again and tell them that they couldn't have tried to destroy the Demon King with the Dragon Balls.

"We didn't get an answer before rushing out…" Tenshinhan lamented after closing up beside Yamcha's jet that lagged behind compared to Tenshinhan's flying speed.

"Well, at this point it doesn't matter. We need to make sure that the Dragon Team doesn't use the Dragon Balls to destroy Demon King Piccolo, we can try to sever their lifelink and if it doesn't work… We'll just ask for strawberries…" Yamcha joked.

"Who would be vain enough to ask a Divine Dragon such trivial things?" Tenshinhan smirked at Yamcha's joke.

* * *

"Nicely done, Chiaotzu!" Muten Roshi cheered on the floating ghoul as he blasted the massive glacier with his Dodonpa, separating the ice and leaving only one half of the glacier with the Dragon Ball etched inside it exposed for picking up. Bulma lowered her craft and let Puar float out through the open doors and pick the Dragon Ball up. The floating cat pulled on the Dragon Ball but failed to remove it from its icy prison.

"Heh, you're such a weakling…" Oolong mocked his pal before receiving a pound to the head from Bulma who turned around just to punch the useless anthropomorphic pig.

"At least he's trying something!" Bulma complained. "You're just sitting here doing nothing, no, even less than nothing because you're complaining and making us all mad."

"M-My… It's… Awfully cold outside…" Launch buried herself in her fur coat only for the frosty fur hood to caress her nose and irritate it even more than the chilly northern winds have already done. To surprise to absolutely nobody, Launch sneezed.

"Alright! Time to lodge that damned thing out!" Launch, now in her blond form approached the open door with a massive army knife lodged in her teeth and jumped off, grabbing Puar by his tail and taking him down with her. Had it not been for Chiaotzu's aid in lifting the maniacal bandit up, she'd have gone down and splattered down below together with the shapeshifting cat.

"Thanks, short-stuff!" Launch smirked at Chiaotzu before using his arm as a swing and swinging herself to the ice platform and beginning to go at it with her knife. It didn't take her too long to dislodge the Dragon Ball and turn to the Dragon Team inside the jet with the Dragon Ball free from ice.

"Finally, we've got all seven…" Muten Roshi sighed at ease. The seventh Dragon Ball even gleamed in a golden shine, as if excited to meet its six peers.

A ray of red sent the jet spiraling down while it blasted at the glacier, devastating it and sending titanic ice shards into the air from the violent explosion. Only the Dragon Ball froze in mid-air and began floating at another direction, together with six more that came from inside the jet in a controlled manner, floating in a vortex right after another and landing in a neat formation beside the wooden boots of a lone, tall and slouching figure atop of a nearby glacier.

"What luck… That all seven Dragon Balls would be brought together just as I came for one of them…" Demon King Piccolo muttered to himself as he leaned to examine the seven by his feet. "Did I not deserve a lucky break though? After having all my sons systematically slaughtered and feeling every bit of their pain, after having my own body reduced to a pathetic shell, clutching for every pathetic little straw for a chance of survival, even being taken by my worst enemy on a magic carpet ride… Mr. Popo… You should have kept closer attention to what you are carrying to your master… No. It's no luck at all that I have memorized the readings of that blue shrimp's Dragon Radar in case he tried to betray me. I earned every little bit of this."

The jet began rising up even though its engine had been snuffed out and every mechanical part of it had frozen the moment that the burning jet fuel wasn't there to thaw the emergency propellers out. Chiaotzu struggled to keep the entire jet afloat, holding it from below as he lifted it in search of the nearest platform to place the jet onto.

"Hmph… Martial artists… Of course, your lot would be collecting the Dragon Balls…" Demon King Piccolo spoke to himself with bitterness. "Yet even now I lack the strength to challenge you, but rest assured after my strength is restored, I'll hunt you all down as you did to my sons…"

"It's… Demon King Piccolo!" Muten Roshi pointed at the lone, sluggish and crooked shape atop of the glacier. "Chiaotzu, place us down, I can't perform the Mafuba on such unstable grounds, I'll miss the jar!"

"There's nowhere to put us down to…" Chiaotzu yelled out, he could have easily lifted a jet such as this one even if it was filled with wrecking balls and not people but lifting it and remaining concentrated enough to hold it in the air was a much more difficult task.

"Come now, Divine Dragon, appear and fulfill my wish!" King Piccolo raised his hands over the Dragon Balls.

Muten Roshi grabbed Bulma and leaped out of the jet, landing atop of a nearby floating glacier piece. It was far too feeble to support the jet but it could have supported a handful of people just fine. Launch had been clutching to one such piece and floating in freezing water unconscious just below. There was no way to connect with the Mafuba from this distance but if the Demon King summoned the Divine Dragon, Muten Roshi might have just spoken his wish before the Demon King Piccolo did, reducing the Demon King to ash and ending his reign of terror at last.

"Don't do whatever you're planning to do." A voice reached Muten Roshi from the side. The confused martial arts master turned to his side to witness a black-skinned genie floating atop of a magical carpet, donned in fine, eastern clothes similar to royal inhabitants of the Diablo Desert region and clad in golden jewelry and accessories.

"Who are you?" Muten Roshi muttered.

"I am Mr. Popo. God's Attendant." The genie declared with a blank and indifferent face as he observed the sky turning dark and gloomy in preparation for the emergence of the Divine Dragon.


	65. Evil Tribe Triumphant

"God's attendant? What is going on here?" Muten Roshi demanded some more answers from this mysterious, black genie who floated in front of him on a magic carpet and denied them the opportunity to subdue Demon King Piccolo.

"You might not understand this but… Kami-sama is linked to Demon King Piccolo – if there is no more Demon King Piccolo, there is no more Kami-sama. Kami-sama was ready to make that sacrifice but I was not. I scooped up Demon King Piccolo before the martial artists could finish him off but it seems like he's given me the slip by leaving a double on my carpet and jumping off." Mr. Popo explained.

A bolt of lightning struck the seven Dragon Balls, making them emit a powerful radiance around them that then burst forth and began coiling into the sky, taking the form of a titanic Divine Dragon. While the beam of light rose up into the sky, breaking through the gloomy clouds and skewering them like a needle moving through the cloth it was sewing on, the dragon's appearance was yet to solidify and become final.

"We must stop him from using the Dragon Balls, ask the Divine Dragon to destroy the Demon King before he regains his full power!" Muten Roshi pleaded with Mr. Popo but the ever-indifferent genie just shook his head.

"No. The Demon King is of no danger to me even in his full power. If the Divine Dragon fulfills your wish and destroys the Demon King, Kami-sama will die as well and then the Dragon Balls will disappear forever. That is something I cannot allow to happen." Mr. Popo declared. "I would allow you to seal him, can you use the Mafuba?"

"I can but not from this position, I will miss my jar. The wave is quite turbulent and I would only have one shot." Muten Roshi admitted. "Even from your magic carpet… It doesn't look like I'd be able to pull it off."

"In that case, stay still and watch." Mr. Popo smiled to Muten Roshi. "As Kami-sama's attendant, I will make sure that Kami-sama stays alive and strong."

"You wretched martial artists, before I regain the limitless power I had in my youth, I'll make sure to destroy you all!" the Demon King's eyes turned red as he turned for Launch who was floating on a dislodged platform of ice, halfway submerged in freezing water. Muten Roshi only saw a flash of burgundy and black, before he could register what had happened, Mr. Popo was in front of Launch with his mouth open and gobbled King Piccolo's eye-beam down like it was a tasty treat of poultry.

"Tsk… You insufferable dog…" Demon King Piccolo grumbled but looked up at the still forming Divine Dragon. He knew that Mr. Popo was not someone he could have messed with even in the absolute prime of his strength, it was one of the reasons why he never tried forcefully absorbing Kami back into his body and becoming much more powerful back in the day.

"I might have endangered these people by letting you run rampant, Demon King Piccolo, Kami-sama would be sad if I let you do as you please. I cannot destroy you without killing Kami-sama too so I will not be doing that but I will protect these innocent people from you." Mr. Popo pointed his finger at the Demon King. "Now, do as you will and begone."

The Demon King grit his fangs for a moment. He looked back up at the Divine Dragon who had completed his transformation and now leaned in on down from the gloomy night's sky closer to his summoner. The Demon King had always thought he knew for certain what he would ask for the Dragon Balls to accomplish but, now that he actually had them in his control, he wasn't so sure anymore.

"Now, state your wish!" the Divine Dragon demanded to know.

He could have asked for anything. The Demon King pondered on what it was best to ask for before he heard the voice of Muten Roshi rising in the distance. That ancient martial artist meant to ask the Divine Dragon to destroy the Demon King like the deceitful serpent that he was! Luckily for the Demon King, even when in his current crippled state, he was still faster…

"Make me and Kami whole again with me in control!" The Demon King demanded of the Divine Dragon. Mr. Popo's gaze widened in shock, switching from his usual cold and strict glare he used for all matters that did not concern Kami.

"W-What? He didn't ask for his youth restored?" Muten Roshi expressed a fair bit of surprise of his own.

"A simple matter…" the Dragon declared and his eyes gleamed with a red spark. An outburst of azure aura burst from all around the Demon King as his body brimmed with newly gained power. The tyrannical King of the Evil Clan straightened out his back and flexed his muscles, still covered with a swampy shade of green skin. After fulfilling Demon King Piccolo's wish, the Eternal Dragon turned to stone in an instant and crumbled away, pelted by the harsh northern blizzards while the Dragon Balls turned to useless spheres of stone.

"Th-This is…" Mr. Popo's eyes teared up. "Horrible…"

The Demon King erupted into a mad fit of laughter, expelling all of his evil overjoy out at once and, for the first time since clashing with the martial artists and returning from his imprisonment in the rice cooker, feeling truly triumphant and happy.

"Heh… Now what will you say, you detestable genie? Didn't expect this, did you? I guess now you'll have to serve me!?" the Demon King once again erupted in unbridled laughter, appearing to have almost gone mad of power and joy together.

"It's… All over…" Muten Roshi slumped on the glacial platform, shaking it up and very nearly throwing Bulma and Oolong into the freezing waters under it. "The Demon King will rule the world again…"

"It's not the worst-case scenario yet…" Bulma pointed out. "Look at his body, he's still absurdly old, isn't he? The Divine Dragon did nothing to give him back his youth. He just pumped him full of Kami's power."

"What good will him dying of old age in a hundred years be when we'll be long dead by then!?" Oolong pulled on his ears. "Hey, you, genie! You will still protect us, right?"

"K-Kami-sama is… Gone…" Mr. Popo muttered to himself, unsure of what he was meant to do now.

"Great, he broke Mr. Popo…" Oolong wrapped his arms around his chest, feeling freezing even when wearing his green winter jacket and an ushanka.

The eyes of the Demon King gleamed with a red spark, the entire glacial region blew up in a chain of explosions extending in a crescent shape wherever the Demon King directed his glare. When the smoke settled down and the downpour of water that Piccolo's explosion raised finished, the gloom in the sky that the appearance of the Divine Dragon cleared up, there was only a magical carpet with a frozen in place Mr. Popo standing still.

"Well, best of luck tending to the God's Temple and serving as the replacement Kami to you, lapdog. I have a feeling you'll be looking for a replacement for a long time to come!" Demon King Piccolo declared before laughing to his heart's content one last time and rising up into the sky. "Now, if you excuse me, my old body doesn't have forever to enjoy my undisputed reign over the world so I'm on a bit of a schedule, you see!"

Demon King Piccolo took off at incredible speed, rushing about as fast as it would have been suitable to an Evil Tribe demon royalty that was in a hurry to enact its iron grip over the world and establish his new world order and produce offspring that would be more powerful than ever and more than capable of maintaining Demon King Piccolo's rule after he passes away. It somehow felt right, after the ruthless deaths that the martial artist filth gave to his children, that those very same offspring would one day rule the world in King Piccolo's stead…

* * *

"Something's up ahead…" Yamcha yelled out at Tenshinhan after he noticed a signature on the jet's radar. It could have been something as ordinary as a larger dinosaur or another aircraft but the creature wasn't moving at all. Almost as if… It was waiting for them.

"That Ki!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth, "Even I can sense it from here!"

The jet drifted in mid-air to stop in time and Tenshinhan stopped as well, respecting the distance between the two martial artists and the enemy that floated in their path – the Demon King Piccolo. Something was off, however, both Yamcha and Tenshinhan could see that. This Demon King Piccolo looked similar to how he did back during their first meeting but he didn't have any scars or signs of injury from earlier. Even more, he looked confident as ever to be meeting Tenshinhan and Yamcha on the battlefield despite being soundly beaten before.

"So you really have survived!" Yamcha pointed at the Demon King, almost as if accusing him of some crime. "We don't have any time to waste with you, our friends are collecting the Dragon Balls and they're going to ask the Divine Dragon to destroy you so if you want to stay alive, move out of our way!"

The Demon King couldn't help but smile. Without uttering a word and reveling in how clueless these soon to be dead-men were. He breathed that glee in and out a few more times before his revelry was interrupted by the three-eyed bother before him.

"Didn't you hear us? If you die – Kami dies so we will keep you alive but we've got no time to beat you around again and cause Kami any more pain! Move!" Tenshinhan demanded with a vein popping out on the top of the martial artist's bald head.

"Oh? Your friends, you say?" Demon King Piccolo broke the silence that Yamcha found exceptionally creepy. "So scary…" the Demon King took a fighting pose and prepared to take the two on in mid-air. He could recall one of these two being a poor mid-air combatant, that was unfortunate but it wasn't like any of these two would have been capable of giving him a good fight anyway.

"Tsk. We've no time for this!" Tenshinhan grunted and put his hands up and formed the Kikoho sign with them. "I'll take you out with one blast, it will hurt Kami-sama but it will save him too! Kikoho!"

A blinding beam of light covered the entire battlefield, a roaring Kikoho of previously unseen intensity swallowed up the Demon King entirely and drowned the darkness of his shadowy shape out with its radiating might. Once the blast settled down and the smoke cleared out, the Demon King just dusted his gi that didn't even have a single scratch on it.

"What in the world… Was that meant to be?" the Demon King smiled, knowing full-well the fear that this show of his new might would inspire in these martial artist scumbags that very nearly came to finishing him off before.

Oh, how sweet was the look on their faces, the realization that their enemy was now many times more powerful than ever before and the absolute cluelessness as to how that was possible. One of them or both of them must have wondered about the Demon King having fulfilled his wish but he didn't look like he was young and in the prime of his strength. This confusion, this lack of understanding of why they were now just insects to be smashed to pieces by the lord of the Evil Tribe was the sweetest of all, worth the time that Demon King Piccolo would waste snuffing this chaff out.

"Your friends…" Demon King Piccolo spoke up before his body disappeared completely and his elbow smashed Tenshinhan's jaw to pieces, with the Demon King having moved up and covered the distance between the two in an instant. "Are all dead now."

King Piccolo threw a pair of wayward strikes to finish Tenshinhan off but there was still fight in the broken martial artist, enough so to evade them but not the grab of Demon King's elongated arm that pulled him in and then swung and released him to smash right into Yamcha jet. The jet kept on spinning and letting out bleeps of alarm as it threatened to crash into one of the barren islands of a frozen tundra archipelago below.

Just barely Yamcha managed to straighten the jet out and crash it in a way that would not result in the jet's explosion to heated bars and pieces of iron and great balls of fire and he crawled out from the jet with the battered Tenshinhan still in his clutch. The two stared up at the flying dread above them that continued to stare down at them from up above, hoping that what they've heard earlier wasn't true. That maybe they've heard something wrong, somehow…

"It feels almost too good to let you two join them now. Maybe absorbing Kami again made me weak at heart, filled me with that useless mercy of his…" Demon King Piccolo tapped his elongated finger to his heart so hard that he ripped his gi in the middle with it. "Oh well, you can carry that mercy of mine all the way down to Hell!"

The eyes of the Demon King lit up crimson, blasting the entire archipelago to bits and pieces and reducing it to nothing together with anyone unlucky enough to have been located down there at the time of the explosion. Observing the smoldering ashes and the forming roaring whirlpools of frozen water down below, the Demon King then continued his directed flight right to the Central City, the capital of the world.

"Heh… It's just lucky enough for me that taking over the world is as simple as killing one King, saves an old man some time before he has to kick the bucket…" the Demon King declared to himself before laughing it up again and darting off towards the Central City with all of his newly found speed.

* * *

The trace of evil Ki all the way up north began trailing back to the south. Chayote found that curious, expanding the range of how far she could sense Ki and trying to feel up the signatures of someone like Muten Roshi, strong people whom she should have been able to pick up but they were simply not there anymore. Neither was Chiaotzu. This development made the Saiyan to stop in her tracks.

"Huh, what's wrong?" Goku wondered, approaching Chayote on his Kinto, Krillin mirrored that from the other side atop of his Dark Kinto.

"Muten Roshi's Ki, I can't pick it up anymore. Chiaotzu's Ki is gone too. Demon King Piccolo has been close to them and now he's moving back to the south-west. I think he's homing in on a pair of strong Ki coming from the direction of the Sacred Land of Korin." Chayote explained. Her Ki Sense ability was nowhere near as honed as it could have been, she wasn't yet able to precisely tell whose Ki she was sensing unless the Ki was so foul that it could have only belonged to someone like Demon King Piccolo nor could she sense Ki too far away unless it was enlightened in a way by a much more prominent signature as she could barely sense Muten Roshi and Chiaotzu earlier before Demon King Piccolo approached them and made their Ki more defined in the presence of his signature.

"Wh-What does that mean? You can't possibly be saying that…" Krillin freaked out. He dreaded the possibility of Muten Roshi, Chiaotzu and the rest being subjected to the same kind of fate that he had to experience for just a little while. There were no more Free Return Tickets, after all.

"Not necessarily," Chayote shrugged. "I couldn't really pick them up too good earlier either, not until Demon King Piccolo got really close to them. But now they're… Gone… There's just nothing."

A flash of black and burgundy confused everyone around, Mr. Popo riding a magical carpet appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of the three, facing Chayote and in-between Goku and Krillin atop of their flying clouds. The thing that had cast Chayote down the God's Temple all this time ago had finally shown itself but… By now Chayote had long since gotten over wanting to torture him slowly and kill him for the disgrace that this thing made her go through. Now she just wanted to be done with Earth and leave to meet her destiny as part of the Frieza Army again. It just would have been so much better if Goku came with her…

"Something terrible has happened. I need you three to come with me…" Mr. Popo declared and wrapped his hands around Krillin and Goku. "Jump onto my carpet." He invited Chayote as well.

"No way…" Chayote shook her head. "I still hate your guts. Not enough to straight out murder your face but too much to sign up for your magic carpet ride."

"Suit yourself, whatever you do – don't fight Demon King Piccolo now. You can't die, no matter what happens." Mr. Popo warned Chayote before his magic carpet popped out of existence and blasted off to the God's Temple. To Chayote it almost seemed as if Mr. Popo's carpet took Goku and Krillin all the way to Sacred Land of Korin in an instant.

"So now you'll be telling me what to do, huh?" Chayote pressed her hands by her hips, raising an eyebrow and feeling all-around challenged by the warning of the genie. "We'll see about that!" her face turned serious as she took off at the direction of Demon King Piccolo, to be further corrected as the Evil Tribe scumbag fixes his destination.

It was about time they'd meet face-to-face with the bastard that postponed her the journey to space and cost her the Free Return Ticket.


	66. The Virtue of Patience

"We're here!" Mr. Popo announced and took a leap off of the magic carpet. Goku looked around, letting the sights of God's Temple sink into his mind, ever the curious soul. Krillin still clenched to the carpet and quivered in shock as the traveling speed of the magical carpet might have been a bit more than he was used to. It took Krillin far too much time to even approach the edge of the carpet and peek down at the marble-colored tiles below. The boy looked at them as if they were hot lava.

"What is this place?" Goku wondered and then jumped off the carpet himself, taking a few moments to wander around a few steps to each side just so he could examine the place more carefully.

"This is God's Temple. I am Mr. Popo, the attendant of Earth's guardian." Mr. Popo explained. "Earth's guardian lives here and presides over the entirety of the world. You might know it as the upper layer of the Korin Tower, the temple one level above Korin Temple."

Goku jumped back in surprise, exclaiming all of the shock aloud. Krillin finally gathered the courage to extend his pudgy and hardened by training arm and touch the solid floor with his finger, still clutching the warm and safe embrace of the carpet for the moment.

"I'll be having those bells. The two of you have earned Korin's approval, after all." Mr. Popo extended his hand.

"Huh? You mean these bells?" Goku reached under his gi and pulled out a bell that he then handed to Popo. Because Krillin still felt awry about taking off of the carpet, Mr. Popo whistled making the carpet blast off from underneath the boy's feet so fast that Krillin rolled off of it and tumbled on the tower ground, as if someone had pulled a literal rug from underneath him. While it was a trial by fire to Krillin's recently brought back to life mind, the youth had enough sanity left to hand his bell to Mr. Popo when the genie approached him.

"For the next day, the two of you will train here." Mr. Popo announced. "Kami-sama is no longer with us to oversee your training but the world needs saving."

"Huh?" Goku bent his head to the side like a curious puppy.

"Demon King Piccolo has used the Dragon Balls to merge with Kami-sama. Long ago, the Earth's guardian and the Demon King were one and the same being and now, using the Dragon Balls, King Piccolo became one again with his old self." Mr. Popo explained.

"Ah! So that's why the sky turned dark all of a sudden! I had figured that Bulma and the rest have gathered the Dragon Balls, so it was Demon King Piccolo, after all!" Goku hammered his extended palm with his fist while his face turned serious. The boy then tightened his belt. "Alright! Thanks for letting us know, we've gotta go flatten him now!"

"Calm down. All of your friends who have been gathering the Dragon Balls have died. Demon King Piccolo annihilated them. I would have died too but it takes a lot more physical power to destroy me since I am mostly a magical being." Mr. Popo explained. He might not have anticipated Goku's reaction, the young Saiyan clenched his fists and tensed up his entire body while he growled with animalistic noises, the hair on his tail and on his head spiked up like that of a furious cat. The Saiyan then erupted in a wild roar that made the ground underneath his feet shake, tilting and nearly pulling the tiles from underneath his feet all over the God's Tower.

All reactions that should have been entirely impossible in the rare atmosphere up here.

"Calm down." Mr. Popo ordered. "If you run off right now, you'll die like the two other friends of yours that have come up here."

"Two more? You can't mean… Tenshinhan and Yamcha?" Krillin wondered. The news of everyone's deaths has hit him hard though he reacted differently from Goku. His entire body appeared to stiffen and lock down in fear, the boy's lips waved while the color of his skin paled out. Despite the emotional turmoil he was going through, those two seemed like the only duo capable enough to have earned Korin's permission to climb up to Earth's guardian deity.

"Tenshinhan and… Yamcha too!" Goku yelled out, hunching over in fury. "That Piccolo bastard… Must pay!"

The boy took off in a speedy blitz. Mr. Popo's shape blurred and flickered right up in front of where Goku was dashing to. The genie delivered the strongest hook to the boy's jaw he could because it would have taken just that sort of impact to even get to the Saiyan. The best blow Popo had didn't even send Goku down either, the Saiyan just stumbled back a tiny bit and wiped his jaw, checking for traces of blood of which there was none.

"What's the matter? I… Should have been faster…" Goku wheezed. "Stronger!"

"All that meaningless raging and breathing. You've spent out your limited air up here. Your body's reacting accordingly. If you can't breathe – you can't fight. See? There's so much you still need to learn. I would like to train you for a good decade or so but there's no time. Demon King Piccolo will continue to rampage day by day, he's desperate too so he will be in a rush to conquer the world." Mr. Popo explained himself.

"Rush? What do you mean?" Krillin wondered.

"Demon King Piccolo originally intended to regain his youth using the Dragon Balls. That's because he is very old and might not have much of his natural lifespan left. When one dies of natural causes they cannot be brought back using the Dragon Balls too so there would be no coming back for him. I believe he intends to use his unmatched power to conquer the world and then populate it with his Evil Tribe demons, stronger than ever because they would be spawned from his current power." Mr. Popo replied.

"So he's that desperate, huh? Still… There must be a way to restore the Dragon Balls!" Krillin clenched his fists too, the boy shook his head as his eyes were beginning to tear up. Everyone, everyone he knew and has grown to like over the past few crazy years were now dead with one simple blast, just like that Evil Tribe demon killed him…

"I'm afraid that might be impossible. Kami-sama has created the Dragon Balls, it is an ability only he had, there were no other guardians capable of creating the Dragon Balls. Although… Kami-sama might be an alien, given how he's come to this world using a spaceship." Mr. Popo scratched the side of his turban. "Right now that is not your main concern. You must follow me, we don't have much time."

Without staying around to make sure he was being followed, Mr. Popo turned around and began tapping toward the main temple. Krillin's attention switched between Goku who still stood in place, stunned and staring at his fist, grinding his teeth in anger and Mr. Popo, who continued to walk with a hastened step toward the depths of the temple.

"Goku, we must go…" Krillin pressed his hand to Goku's shoulder.

"It hurts…" Goku growled, releasing his fist and scratching his chest. "I wanna go and take a shot at Demon King Piccolo for what he did so bad, it hurts not being able to!"

"If you want to beat Demon King Piccolo, following Mr. Popo and becoming strong, being patient, that's the way to do it…" Krillin pointed out. "You heard what Mr. Popo said, Tenshinhan and Yamcha took off to fight Demon King Piccolo without training here and they… They're gone now. Remember what Mr. Popo said? We'll only be training here for a day, then we'll be able to beat Demon King Piccolo! Come on, Goku, surely you can be patient for just a day!"

Krillin smiled and faked a laugh, just to brighten the mood, act like the deaths of most of his friends all at once didn't make him sadder than he was wandering limbo as a restless spirit. At times the baldy caught himself thinking that it might have been better if he didn't return to life at all, that he remained restless but at least thought his friends happy and alive. Maybe… Maybe Chayote should have held on to her ticket and used it on someone innocent like Bulma?

"I guess…" Goku sighed and caved in to despair, letting go of the rage furling in his heart while he turned to Krillin and the two ran after Mr. Popo to the darkness of God's temple. "Thanks, Krillin."

Krillin nodded. He couldn't help wondering why Chayote would use her Free Return Ticket to bring him back. Now that she did, he had to justify that responsibility, she spent this one-of-a-kind chance on him and he should have proven her right for doing so but… How could he? He wasn't a weakling but still so much weaker than Goku, Chayote and even Tenshinhan. Now all he could have done was be a friend to Goku, help the boy cling to what little sanity remained to their life and help him discover the virtue of patience.

That was all he was good for but it didn't have to be.

"This is the Room of Spirit and Time." Mr. Popo pointed at an old but maintained and oiled wooden door. "There are several doorways to that place and one of them is on this tower. Time flows differently in that place after you spend a year inside this room, only a day would have passed on Earth."

"I see! So that's why you said we'd only be training for one day, in reality, it will be a great deal longer!" Krillin pumped his fists. This was his chance, the crazy, divine training that will help him close the gap, become strong, as strong as Goku, as strong as Chayote and become useful in different ways. Prove that Chayote didn't waste her ticket by bringing him back to life. "We don't have to stop there… We can train for three days, maybe even a whole week!"

"It's not that simple. If Mr. Popo tells you that you should train for just one day – he means business, remember that!" Mr. Popo pointed at Krillin. The tone of his voice rose even though his calm expression didn't change whatsoever. "The conditions inside that place will be horrible. The weather in there goes haywire, the air is incredibly dense, worse even than up here. Worst yet is the gravitational pull, it's ten times stronger than that on Earth."

"What's gravilational pull?" Goku turned to Krillin.

"It's uh… Well, how to explain it…" Krillin butt his two fingers, wondering if he truly could handle the conditions that even Mr. Popo considered to be brutal. Not too long ago, he nearly lost all of his stomach's contents to a really fast magical carpet that barely even affected Goku or Mr. Popo at all. The only reason he did not was because he hadn't eaten anything since coming back to life.

"No time now, you'll find out once you enter. A person may only use one entryway into the room twice in their life. Don't feel discouraged to leave earlier than intended too. I'm sure that Krillin might not handle a full day inside there. Even a full hour will be fine, I can assist with the rest until Goku is finished." Mr. Popo explained.

There he was again… Singling him out, that was always the case, wasn't it? Goku was always the freaky monster of power and skill. Krillin ran away from Orin Temple because he couldn't handle the bullying, he hoped that training with Muten Roshi would be a shortcut to the power needed to teach his bullies a lesson and become strong, someone people would admire. At Muten Roshi's he kept trying to find shortcuts too, in the beginning, at least… Then Goku kept pushing himself to the line and past every time, discovering new and new worlds of power where Krillin just hung back and played it safe, following Goku's footsteps where he knew it was safe and sound, stepping where he knew he could handle it. No more, no more shortcuts!

Krillin stepped forward, prompting Mr. Popo to open up the door and let him in. It was important to Krillin that he entered first. Goku looked crushed the entire time, it was as if that now that he was not allowed to act on his anger he didn't know where to spend all of those emotions, all of that boiling power so he just functioned just like Krillin had before – as a restless ghoul wandering the God's Temple. That was fine, once he began seriously training, devoted all of those feelings into training – he'll be back to normal in no time. That was just how Goku was, no matter who came and gone, Goku would remain the same, he was the constant, the one nonsensical thing that made the most sense.

"Oh yeah, only two people may enter at a time. Mr. Popo would have liked to enter and oversee your training but… Now that Kami-sama is gone, Mr. Popo is the temporary guardian. I will need to find a suitable replacement too. Either way, Son Goku is really amazing for a mortal. Someone with the instincts of you two will have more use discovering the new, plateau of power by yourselves anyway." Mr. Popo smiled as the two entered and then he shut the door behind them.

"Whaa! Look, Krillin, it's a full house in here!" Goku yelled out in surprise once the two were the only souls left in the endless plain extending from beyond the central temple. The Saiyan youth ran up to the two wings extending from the central entry point and pointed at the housing, the vast food supplies and bathing quarters. Just like Goku had claimed, the Room of Spirit and Time had everything needed for a comfortable year of training, except, of course, comfort.

Even inside the temple, Krillin's face turned pale as he wheezed in and out, the air was incredibly dense even inside the temple, a far cry even from what it was like on God's Temple. And they were supposed to train here?! Train as if physical activity? When even Goku got winded after breathing erratically a couple of times to where he went from being a little monster to not being able to outpace Mr. Popo… No! No more excuses, no more shortcuts, that was what Krillin had decided, wasn't it?

Krillin ran past Goku, the confused Saiyan just looked at his partner baffled as Krillin ran up to the edge of the temple and took the first step on the endless white space that extended to seemingly limitless expanses to each direction. The immense pull of the ground, once he stepped off of the first step, made Krillin slump to the ground, hunched over the focusing all of his strength just to not collapse on his face.

"I can't breathe…" he thought. "Shit… I can't… Breathe…"

Sweat broke out on Krillin's bald head and ran down his entire body, even the turtle gi that Krillin wore became soaking wet with it in seconds when heat twice worse and at least four times drier than that of the Diablo Desert washed Krillin's body. In an instant, chills of sixty degrees below freezing point stiffened Krillin's body while his arms shook from the seemingly impossible challenge of merely staying inside this room. Training… Just what kind of training were they meant to do in these conditions?!

"Krillin, are you okay, what are you doing!?" Goku yelled out, chasing after him before his entire body became paralyzed as well and his knees bent from the pressure of gravity befalling him out of nowhere. "Whoa!" he yelled out. "This is just like that place Grandpa showed me…"

"He's done this sort of training before… If Goku can do it then…" Krillin's hands shook, the muscles both in his upper arms and in his forearms felt like they were made of led, lifeless and only good for caving in and being molded by tremendous pressure. Rings of black surrounded Krillin's eyes, something snapped and then… Everything went black.

"Wake up!" voice reached Krillin. "Come on, wake up!" there it was again, Goku's voice. Krillin opened his eyes, seeing the worried expression of his friend. The baldy sat up and looked around, he was used to dreaming nightmares, he would have been fine recalling the dread of his death or the meaningless existing as a ghoul doomed to wandering limbo forever. But the one thing that he was not used to was waking up to the real nightmare.

The dense air, the crazy, shifting each passing moment at seemingly random intervals weather… Krillin would dread training with Goku even outside, even in perfectly comfortable conditions but this… This was something that nobody should have signed up for.

"You passed out! It's okay, it was really hard for me too, but you know what? I think I've gotten a whole bit stronger just dragging your body to bed!" Goku laughed out. Just like that he was back to his old self, the trouble of training in such a crazy location, the despair of having lost all of his friends with a single, careless hand gesture of a tyrannical Demon King, none of that weighed Goku down. At this moment, he was just glad to see Krillin feeling better.

Krillin laid his head back onto the pillow. It was easy to declare that he would, from now on, train as hard as he could. That he'd persevere any conditions, no matter how taxing. That he'd become as strong as Goku or Chayote when coming from the position of a tremendous disadvantage. A whole different matter entirely was putting one's money where one's mouth was. Krillin was always good at declarations and resolutions, so was Yamcha, but Goku was always more of the doing kind.

"You rest, for now, I'll try getting used to this place in the meantime, we can start training when you feel better!" Goku smiled with serious eyes, raising his fist up for a bump by Krillin's side.

"No!" Krillin sat up and pushed the cover aside. "I've already wasted so much of your time, we only have one year, Goku! We can't just lay around and get used to a little bit of heat or cold or crazy gravity! Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Bulma, Muten Roshi, Puar and Oolong are gone. We owe it to them, we owe it to them to try our hardest!"

The smile didn't fade from Goku's face, he just nodded when Krillin answered Goku's fist bump and slipped out from his bed. The two rushed out together, side by side, to let the inhospitable conditions of the Room of Spirit and Time to challenge their bodies and their souls once more. As they'd have to do for a whole year to come…


	67. King Castle Has Fallen

A pair of uniformed security guards crossed with one another as their patrolling routes had them meeting up with each other after finishing the lap. The two nodded to one another or just blinked slowly to acknowledge each other's presence but after a while that always got old so they just focused on patrolling the area assigned to them.

There were no questions as to why they were patrolling in the King's Castle in the middle of the night. After all, this was one of those rare times when the King wasn't working overnight which meant that his seat was essentially free. Far too many youngsters tried to sneak into the castle and pretend to take over the world by sitting in his chair. Not to mention the looters that came just to rob the world's most influential and powerful political figure of all the fancy decorations in his place of work. Given how those were the main threats that the handful of security personnel protected the castle from, there weren't too many of them present when one of them went pale and noticed their impending doom.

"W-What's that?" he pointed at a floating figure up above their heads. A smiling humanoid slug of a wrinkled head and skin of a murky shade of green stared down at the castle yard from above. The figure loomed over the castle with its hands wrapped over its chest. Without further warning or explanation of its intentions or nature, the monster took a wild plummet down and landed with a high-pitched tap of its wooden boots.

"Stay back, Mr., this is the King's Castle, you're not allowed to be here after working hours!" one of the security guards raised his weapon. The monstrous slug-man began slowly taking one step after another on the paved road leading toward the castle. Each movement of his leg was purposefully slowed down as if challenging the security guard to open fire.

"What's he doing? We'll shoot him!" the security guard that noticed the floating figure first trembled, still hesitant to aim his gun at the large, green man.

"Whatever, it's his funeral!" the more gung-ho security guard of the pair opened fire. Flares sparked from the tip of his weapon, spitting heated bullets by the handful at the approaching man. Before the bullets even reached the approaching dread, they halted in mid-air and began to furl around him like dust rings formed around some planets, spinning around the approaching green slug-man in a formation of four circles.

"Parbo, bring the rocket launcher!" the security guard that fired the shots turned to his petrified colleague. Seeing the fear and confusion in the eyes of his colleague, the security guard turned to dash for the warehouse himself. All the strongest security guards and most of the heavy weaponry was home. Nobody took a shot at the castle in the middle of the night, most people that wanted the castle hard enough to storm it would have wanted the King dead more than anything.

"S-Stop! Why aren't you stopping?" Parbo, the security guard, finally gathered the gall in him to raise his weapon. In his panic, he didn't evaluate the necessity or the use of a weapon against an enemy that clearly took little to no damage from gunfire but the fact that he met his final moments with a gun in his hand and aimed at the creature that would deliver the doom to him might have inspired more serenity to hearts of some soldiers.

The dreaded Demon King Piccolo walked past poor Parbo, letting the rotating bullets pass right through him without disturbing their cosmic trajectory at all. With a blank expression, Parbo fell to the ground, his upper torso had some trouble maintaining its position atop of the lower half since the rotating bullets buzzed fast enough to shred through him in multiple angles enough times to leave little strings of flesh where Parbo's body crossed over with the trajectory of the bullets.

"Damn it, take this!" the second security guard unleashed his rocket launcher, aiming straight at the strutting demon. The rocket moved at a spiraling trajectory and appeared to raise the dirt and burning blades of grass it tore out from the garden present in the castle yard up to the skies. Before the dust settled down or the smoke cleared out, the haunting taps of the wooden boots made the guard drop the massive tube of steel and projectile explosives to the ground.

A concentrated beam of energy passed through the forehead of the security guard, shedding not a drop of blood but leaving the poor man to collapse on the ground, his consciousness having faded away before it could become aware of its very final moments of existence. Onward did the new King walk, onward to his castle.

The journey from the entryway to his throne seemed like it passed in an instant for the Demon King, each step he took no longer registered in his warped mind, the murder of loathsome humans didn't mean a thing as it once had. Without a doubt, he'd have felt sad about these victims of his conquest had he fused with Kami the right way. Their feelings, their very essences, all that they were would have become one. All the evil in King Piccolo's heart would have become muddled…

"Where is everybody?" the Demon King wondered as he stared ahead through the window. He now regretted not having killed those guards in a more public manner, perhaps he should have blown up the castle or maybe he was better off blowing up the entire Central City? Though if he did, how else would he cement his utter and undisputed dominion over this world?

A pillar of hypersonic boom passed through the King's Castle from roof to the bottom, sending rippling shockwaves at each momentous increment of length until it reached the bottom where it had formed a small crater and ruined not only the garden of the castle yard but also tore up the streets around with cracks for entire blocks.

A flicker of dark colors moved away from the center of the castle that was reduced to rubble now. It took a few moments for the Demon King to rise on his feet and gander at his assailant who without a doubt promised more of a fight than the lowly security he had disposed of before. Even when his guard was completely down, it would have taken a champion of humanity's resistance summed up into one being to as much as scratch him the way he was now.

"Someone as rotten as you can't escape my senses." Chayote stated, watching the Demon King she had just sent crashing down from the public throne room all the way to the bottom of the castle tower.

"Hmph… Another martial artist, huh?" the Demon King smirked. He hated martial artists with all of his being but something about bringing this smug face back down to reality just like he did for those two cocky fools back over the northern regions made him twist his old and dried out lips.

"Another? So you've met Tenshinhan and Yamcha then?" Chayote asked. Before she beat this creature, who looked remarkably similar to Kami, she did want to know what happened to all the Ki signatures she lost track of.

"How would I know? I didn't ask for their names before I've killed them. Humans aren't someone who deserve names, they're cattle. They're slaves to me and they were just sheep to Kami too…" the Demon King spread his hands out, Chayote could feel considerable power flowing through him. This wasn't one of those fights where she could lower her Ki and let the enemy determine how much power wouldn't break them, in this one she truly could have died.

"You two do look alike…" Chayote wondered. "I've planned on killing him once, you know, I wasn't aware back then that there'd be more like him to take his place…"

"Become the guardian? Hmmm…" King Piccolo stroke his chin. "Perhaps that's a fun idea. After all, if that oaf Mr. Popo brings up another guardian, I might be in trouble. Too many weird tricks in that book. Now that Kami is part of me, I have a rough idea of just how many. Yes. There's no use of ruling a world that isn't even aware of its true master. Thanks for this idea, I will be the guardian that protects Earth from new guardians!"

The mad laughter echoed from the side of Demon King Piccolo. This was a laugh of somehow who felt invincible, someone who enjoyed far too much that power they possessed but that was often a sign of that power being a new development. It was more than possible that he was not entirely aware of just how powerful he had become.

"Heh…" Chayote cracked a grin.

"What's so funny?" Demon King Piccolo turned his head with wild, open eyes and proudly baring his fangs at the Saiyan girl.

"This has to be the first time I attack a really powerful guy with skill. Usually, it's the other way around…" Chayote took the moment to enjoy the irony of the situation before entering a fighting stance.

"Attack? Do you intend to attack the Demon King Piccolo? Don't be surprised to find yourself waking up in hell!" the old Demon King didn't even take a fighting stance, choosing instead to take the cocky position of a wide-guard, disguised as a posture of power and confidence. The demon emanated with frightening pressure, his very presence demanded respect, now that Chayote had learned to sense the tide of battle more accurately than just throwing fists at things, she's become aware of all sorts of bothersome things she'd not have bothered her head with earlier.

Chayote's body flickered and disappeared. The Demon King widened his glare, he had never witnessed an opponent with such speed before. By the time he realized that he needed to take this battle more seriously, Chayote's fist was already embedded into the Demon King's cheek, snapping his head aside. He could see it, he could follow it, Chayote noticed his eyes moving together with her, he wasn't skilled yet to fight on this world of power and that gave the Saiyan a few precious moments to exploit that weakness in her opponent.

The second cross met the apt resistance of the Demon King's hand. Something rustled in Chayote's chest, this bastard adapted instantly, one punch and he had mastered why he skipped it, he learned to use his new power and he stopped underestimating Chayote. Just one punch… That was all the quarter she got!

The Demon King pulled Chayote in for an elbow strike of his own Chayote's feet slammed against his chest, stopping her pull and leaving the Demon King open for a push kick that freed Chayote up and stunned the Demon King for a moment. While the old demon stumbled on wobbly legs, Chayote tripped him up from below and then kicked herself off to deliver a divekick and drive the wobbly Demon King to the floor nice and proper. She completed the first engagement with a flip back to gain some distance and time to breathe.

The first round was hers. Still… Against raw power like that, every round might have just been the final one at the same time. She could have pummeled this hard-headed bastard all day only to skip one good blow and lose enough Ki to stand no more chance against him.

Something was wrong! The downed body of the Demon King flickered in transparent colors and faded away as if he had used Afterimage just now. It wasn't quite it, the Demon King was just on another level of speed compared to the opponents she had ever faced. Before she could even blink, the monster had already recovered and moved in from behind her. Chayote stumbled forward to avoid being attacked from behind, her struggle to avoid taking free hits appeared to amuse the Demon King who took a proud stance and laughed out.

"Don't let down your guard now…" he warned Chayote, noting this very moment in which she had nearly lost her head again. "Although, I must commend you. I would have never thought that there were still humans able to damage me in my current state."

"I'm no human. I'm a Saiyan." Chayote replied with a serious face and took her fighting stance to be aware of her opponent's attack if indeed he decided to attack her first.

"Are you? Interesting… I'm not aware of what that is, although… I don't much care. All that matters now is that there are martial artists capable of threatening my sons while they rule the world I leave for them. That is unforgivable. All such beings must be eradicated!" the Demon King clenched his fists by his side. As gusts of wind picked up around the two combatants, evil Ki burst forth from Piccolo and spread outward in vile tendrils.

All that Chayote felt was an electric tingle in her hair. When she tried to move to ease the itch, she realized that she could not move at all. Was this some sort of technique? It must have been similar to Chiaotzu's Psychokinesis ability, the shrimp used to paralyze Goku in the ring too, just like this. This was really lousy, this was too dangerous, she couldn't afford to stand around with an opponent this dire!

King Piccolo shifted again, becoming just a blur before flashing in right up to Chayote. Everything went white for a blink when Chayote became aware of the air rustling her hair and racing through her cheeks, she was airborne already. That impact! She couldn't take many more of those. Taste of blood already made Chayote's senses sharpen, while her mind knew all along the type of danger she was in, the taste of blood in her mouth informed even her subconscious that this was the struggle for her very survival.

Hearing a loud grunt down below, Chayote braced herself for an exchange. As expected, the Demon King delivered himself to Chayote in an instant. He froze in mid-air expecting gravity to claim Chayote and give him the high-ground – the motherlode of all advantages, but Chayote's own flight technique kept her levitating long enough to surprise the Demon King with jabs and kicks that weren't delivered by a falling opponent and didn't come even an inch short.

What was she even doing? Trading blows with that beast? Why? Every punch Chayote threw the Demon King appeared to shrug off, it hurt him, it reached him but it left no impression whatsoever beyond the momentary sting and some inconvenience whereas every impact, even blocked one, felt life-changing to Chayote. Creepy cracks emanated from her limbs when she blocked his blows, the howls from the gusts of his blows she redirected were daunting, like a spaceship or a planetoid zipping past her a billion miles an hour. At that moment Chayote thanked every mentor in martial arts she's studied from: Bora, Korin, Devil Man, every opponent's she's faced and everyone whose battles she's observed. All of them imprinted onto her consciousness and taught their own lessons.

Why was she so afraid before? He was stronger? Who cares… He was faster? Who cares? He seemed pudgy to hit and it didn't feel like hits left any sort of lasting impact? Couldn't have mattered any less. Most importantly of all – this felt like a blast! She was going blow to blow with someone like this guy and every punch she dodged could have blown her brains out through the back of her skull but this was honestly the best time she's ever had on Earth.

There it was, something in this clash had unnerved the Demon King, he hesitated to exploit a few opportunities to strike. Chayote packed her best wallop, putting all of her weight behind it and even flipping over in mid-air while delivering it but it sent the Evil Tribe leader crashing back down. Something that wasn't there distracted Chayote, the city had lit up with lights all around the nearest districts. Their fight didn't go unnoticed, in just mere minutes of the two meeting the city's been head over heels to find out what was going on.

"You wanted the world to know, didn't you?" Chayote landed in front of the kneeling Demon King who gathered strength for another round. "Well, I wouldn't mind kicking the can of some old prune in front of live television myself so don't go around killing everyone – I'm not sharing you with the cameraman."

The Demon King rose to a complete stance, straightened back and all, and looked around at the city that was coming alive. The army vehicles that were rolling in and closing onto the castle yard, the military equipment floating in the air and preparing to bomb the site if needed. For now, everybody stayed back and tried to understand just who was the seaweed-colored slug man fighting with the young woman in the King's Castle yard.

"All around us, nothing but loathsome humans…" King Piccolo declared bitterly. "Clanging their harmless weapons that they would use against my children…"

"You're all about children, can't we have one good fight first?" Chayote tried changing the topic that appeared to be plaguing his mind, just because she didn't like where it was leading the demonic tyrant.

"It's time that these humans know their true overlord, it's time that they know fear, it's time that they know to whom this world shall belong!" the Demon King turned around to face the army of Central City waiting outside the yard walls as well as the posts of military that were placed in each entryway to block off the demon's escape.

"No! Don't waste your Ki on them, I want to fight you at your full power!" Chayote yelled at Piccolo before he raised both of his hands and unleashed all of his pent up fury and desire to be feared like he once was upon the humanity surrounding him in one, compelling explosive energy wave. The golden shine of Piccolo's energy output forced Chayote to cover up her face and dig her feet deep into the ground underneath her. Almost out of instinct her own Ki had formed a protective bubble around her, just enough to withstand the explosive energy wave with minimal damage. Minor burns and damage to the version of Baba's witch cloak she could deal with.

The searing heat from the mass demise of human life persisted in the air for tens of minutes after all was decimated and Central City remained just a dirty, smoldering wasteland without a stone atop of another stone. There were a few residential districts that had managed to survive and looked like they had just been bombed in a raid or something at the very edges of the city. Chayote was a fool to assume that wiping this city clean would have as much as dented the Demon King's Ki. He was glaring back at her before long and his presence was as frightening and authoritative as ever.

"I guess there wasn't anyone as impressive as you amongst these soldiers that protect the humans?" King Piccolo smirked as he took a standing stance with his left side turned to Chayote. It wasn't a serious fighting stance but it was a stance nevertheless. He was done playing around, he was done underestimating her. In his eyes, she was whatever delusional threat to his yet unborn children he saw martial artists as after they killed a bunch of his offspring.

It wasn't like Chayote had absolutely nothing to do with attacking his children anyway. If taking on that hate was a way to prevent sharing this opponent with the rest of the humans, so be it. She'd threaten as many of his non-existing children as needed to feel that high she felt trading blows with him up in the sky earlier. This battle would be so satisfying that she didn't even care if she ended up dying if the universe ended up getting erased…

"Look at what you've gone and done, now you've got your old and rotten body all huffing and puffing." Chayote mocked the Demon King, he had still some things to learn about proper breathing in the middle of a battle but, then again, he was absurdly old so maybe proper fighting didn't matter when one's body was failing anyway. One thing was for certain, Chayote didn't plan on seeing age old enough where she would find that mystery out.


	68. Dreams of a Demon Prince

Intending to exploit the moment of opportunity when King Piccolo's body still felt rough and exhausted right after his massive explosive wave, Chayote raised both her hands up in front of her. Focusing her Ki in the center of the exposed palms, two Ki waves erupted outward in an unstable and jolty pattern, molding together not too far away from where they left since they were unable to maintain their consistency for too long on their own.

The Demon King braced for impact, crossing his arms over his head and gritting his fangs, the Ki wave laid a noble siege on his defenses though, ultimately, it had failed to knock him off his feet. Faltering and waving heavy, King Piccolo huffed out an intense breath and noticed that his opponent was nowhere to be seen. Chayote had only used her combined, full-power Ki wave as a distraction to slip away from Piccolo's notice. It was a tactic that Earthlings commonly used against her during the tournament and a handy trick when confronting a more powerful opponent.

The lingering smoke parted in a spiraling hole as Chayote emerged from its midst in a headstrong charge. The Demon King was too busy waiting for an assault from above, below or from either of the sides, maybe even planning for Chayote having snuck up behind him but he didn't expect her to stay inside the smoke and just use its cover to conceal the way in which she'd attack next.

"Lima Spear!" Chayote yelled out while driving her hand and unleashing all of the Ki she had channeled from within her body while her hand had full contact with the enemy's body, essentially forming the salad-green blast inside the opponent's body as the resonating force of the blast sent them flying back. The Demon King bellowed in pain while he traveled backward a fair distance. As if knowing what was about to happen, the Demon King got completely silent and then…

The blast expanded into a turbulent sphere of erupting violence, drowning out all of the surrounding noise by merely overpowering it and emitting emerald light capable of blinding all those that laid eyes upon it from a distance within the blast's visual reach without the ocular fortitude of a tempered martial artist. The smoke had to clear at one point and Chayote could just huff out in disappointment when she saw the Demon King on his bottom with his chest cavity very much still intact.

"That's one tough bastard…" she scratched her neck. Despite the Demon King's survival of one of her strongest techniques, Chayote wasn't sure just in what condition he'd have survived. She put pretty much everything she had into that strike, intending to end the fight that way, if she didn't kill the Demon King, at the very least she'd planned to cripple him for good. And there he was, slowly sitting up and wiping the blood off of his lips, beaming an angry, death-inducing stare at Chayote.

"You've injured me… You've actually injured me!" The Demon King yelled out. His body phased out in a way that was all too familiar to Chayote, the Saiyan blinked just once before she turned to confront the enemy behind her but it was already too late. The backhanded smack tossed her flying to the Demon King's right. The Demon raced in and threw a brutal knee strike while he chopped with his elbow, creating a guillotine of limbs to crush Chayote's spine in-between of.

Everything went white for a moment, it was the sensation of being unable to draw a breath that brought Chayote back to life, realizing that the Demon King had been swinging her around on his elongated arms. Much to her misfortune, she had phased back to her consciousness for long enough for the swing to confuse her and make her dizzy but also just before the Demon King drove her head-first into the dirty layers of the ashes of Central City. While having her head stuck into the ground while her body hung lifelessly upwards robbed Chayote of any semblance of awareness of what was transpiring up above and she was a fair time away from making enough of a recovery to return to her feet, the young woman could still feel her knee twitching in a nervous impulse while it hung above ground.

Despite that valiant effort to break her spine, Chayote still felt her body, she still seemed to have all of her limbs and despite having the wind knocked out of her, the Demon King appeared to have ceased his rampage as well. Wriggling with her shoulders helped her surface a little bit for her body to slump on the ground to a more convenient position to pick herself back up again. Even if the Demon King didn't snap her neck with his stiff shots, she very nearly twisted it by resurfacing above ground.

"Heh, you really aren't a human, it seems. I've known no humans that could survive attacks like these…" the Demon King smirked with a bloody smile. Despite the bloody appearances, his Ki appeared to have just now properly begun to rustle in a fighting mood. It was just now that the Demon King was beginning to get serious, he still had a Ki level that threatened Chayote's life after taking her strongest Lima Spear to the face… Despite his praises, he was the real monster here.

"I told you, I'm a Saiyan…" Chayote stood back up on her feet and acted like her joints didn't feel like chunks of led while returning to her fighting stance. "I live for this stuff…"

"I see… That answered my next question for you enjoying my punishment since you seem to be coming back for more…" The Demon King cracked his knuckles. His body was getting used to his own monstrous power, the Ki movement inside of his system was now more akin to that of a seasoned fighter rather than a toddler with too much power in his hands. He was adapting, getting used to his new strength more and more with each exchange.

This time Chayote took the offensive, not because she had a particular stratagem that would have aided her in this clash but because she didn't think she could handle too many more of Piccolo's own attacks. A straightforward charge was the best she could do right now. Her head felt too dizzy and her mind was floating all over the place since slamming down for anything more intricate, she was a Saiyan and it was time she got down to the dirty and gritty brawling for a change.

The Demon King blocked her elbow with his own forearm, looking mighty proud of his accomplishment too, his beady black eyes looked down on Chayote both in terms of the size difference between the two as well as the gap in strength. Just when Chayote was beginning to enjoy her breathing privileges, a knee driven to her solar plexus knocked that right out of her. Tight grip locked around the sides of Chayote's head as Piccolo's claws dug into her flesh, he pulled her in to smash her face with more knee strikes but a cross-shaped block from Chayote stopped that. The female Saiyan threw a couple of wayward leg shots to the joints of the Demon King, trying to see if his knees were as weak as those of old people. The free-falling sensation and lack of iron-grip around her head suggested that while King Piccolo didn't collapse from being hit low, it did register with him when his knees were challenged that way.

The two exchanged shots again. Chayote bobbed and weaved around the elongated arms of her demonic opponent while getting up close and personal to him. His longer limbs didn't let him attack her effectively from that range and exploit the difference in speed and power. Power needed distance to build up, speed needed distance to accelerate to its full potential and Chayote was much shorter in both her height and the length of her limbs, allowing her to better utilize the short distance. The female Saiyan hopped up to finish her victorious exchange of blows with a headbutt to the bottom of the Demon King's chin that sent the murky slug-man stumbling back with more bleeding out through his gritted teeth.

"I'm enjoying this very much…" Chayote declared. "A part of me would have liked to have seen you at full power. With you being the way you are, it seems like I could just about win, you know. Even though your power level must be so much greater than mine. I wish I could have seen you with your young body…"

"Whatever you are… You're an odd little creature." The Demon King smiled while crossing his arms over his chest. "You are indeed right that my current body doesn't allow me to utilize my immense power to its fullest. Whenever I attack, I must hold something back because the use of my full strength wastes and withers that power away. Plus, at any given second, I feel a weak, squeaky yell from Kami to not destroy you. The oddest thing is that I've not heard that voice when I exterminated all those humans before… Just shows you how much of a rotten guardian that old crook was."

"Oh, so the old coot is still trying to save the Universe?" Chayote smirked. "Even from inside you…"

"Save the Universe?" the Demon King's eyes widened. "Don't be ridiculous, you clearly understand the difference between our full powers and not even I could destroy the entire Universe…"

"Oh well… I have a feeling that if I explained it to you, you'd not want to keep fighting so I won't. Just try to push that old geezer deeper down and let's go at it for hours longer!" Chayote smiled with excitement. She would have chuckled but it burned her chest a decent bit when she drew breath in. She could still feel that knee strike from earlier, in fact, she could feel almost every strike the Demon King sold her that night.

King Piccolo remained fully open and just raised his chin up, staring at Chayote menacingly. He stood there as if there was some knowledge he had that she did not and that pissed Chayote off some. She wanted to keep fighting and not engage in all that Earthling drama about saving the world. Chayote charged onward with her hands preparing a pair of Ki blasts by her side but the Demon King threw his leg up and sent Chayote flying back in an arcing trajectory. The sharp edges of his wooden boots made Chayote feel a taste of blood in her mouth and she'd been knocked down a few too many times to just pop back on her feet already.

"You're an intriguing creature. Before I kill you, I'll let you in on a little secret. Just because you're on the verge of figuring it out if you just knew what I was and what I could do. You were right when you said that I cannot utilize the full power of this body, my old body is too withered to summon forth all of our combined power, in addition, when I do succeed doing so, it happens for just a heartbeat and it permanently weakens my body by damaging it further from down inside. Not to mention that my fusion with Kami hasn't been… Perfect. It hasn't completely unified our beings, it just surrendered him under my control. The way things are now, my ambition to world domination can still be stopped, however, after tonight, there will be no such way. Not even if you use different Dragon Balls, not even then will you be able to restore your precious Kami and weaken me." The Demon King showed the lines of his fangs to Chayote in an expression of malevolent glee.

"Different Dragon Balls?" Chayote wondered, feeling her left eye swell up and obstruct her depth perception on her. She must have taken a pretty nasty shot there.

"Heh… You're completely oblivious, aren't you? Well, not that it will matter soon… You see, us Evil Tribe members possess the ability to create our offspring by spitting up an egg, however, the sons I have created up until now were just that – my sons. They would have only been able to bring out meek and mindless demonlings of their own, not true inheritors of the Evil Tribe because I've only shared a fraction of my essence and power with them but… Once I reincarnate into a young body – my fusion with Kami will become permanent and immovable, not to mention, the power that my offspring shall possess will be limitless. Yes, he will be my greatest legacy, the very best thing that either I or Kami has created. He will surpass all in power and very well might dominate the entire Universe if you are any indication of what waits out there." The Demon King continued to spout.

"Reincarnation? Offspring? You mean you'll like… Have a kid on me? Ewww!" Chayote covered her own nose and stuck out her tongue in disgust.

"I didn't expect you to understand. All your kind seems to know and crave for is punishment anyway. Well, if my reincarnation ever meets your species, it will deliver all the punishment they crave… As for you, it is time you get gone!" the Demon King raised his fists up and roared out as strain of enormous Ki passed down his body in a channel that seemed to evaporate from his body in the shape of a vaporous aura of scarlet with emerald linings. Electricity passed up and down the Demon King's body as he channeled his seemingly endless power all into one, giant blast. "Explosive Demon Wave!" he yelled out when raising his hand up, the other grabbing hold of his wrist to better control the vast amounts of Ki he had channeled into his technique.

The blinding beam of light seemed to extend into oblivion, running past the crumbled remains of Central City and streak outside the Earth as not leaving the orbit seemed to affect its speed and destructive potential. The ground underneath rumbled and shook making dodging the attack by just jumping or rolling aside almost impossible, requiring at the very least an impressive amount of aerial maneuvering to avoid any damage whatsoever.

The Demon King panted and breathed heavily while his body slumped up into a hunched back and his arms hung down by his sides. The face of the withered, old demon was covered with sweat that washed the blood present on his wounds away while at the same time dyeing more and more of his face with that purple hue.

"Not a trace left, huh…?" the Demon King twisted his lips into a forced smile. "Still, what a troublesome martial artist, I might need to hasten my plans for reincarnation now… You might just need to finish my job of taking over the world for me, my son…"

"Pinto Spear!" a voice cut through the eerie silence, just as the diving streak of black cut through the skies and the gloomy clouds above, parting them to reveal the full-moon hiding its shy face behind them for just a moment. Chayote slammed into the Demon King from up above in a mad dive and buried the Demon King into the ground as deep as she could drive him to before taking a jump out of the hole.

"Where are you looking at?" King Piccolo's voice made Chayote widen her eyes in shock as she felt a grip around her heel, pulling her in from behind. Just as she had avoided the Demon King's attack by taking it to the sky and leaving behind and Afterimage to strengthen the impression of her obliteration, the Demon King had used his own immense speed advantage to avoid Chayote's dive and have her needlessly take a plunge to solid dirt while exploiting the opening afterward.

"Why are you so damn hard to get rid of!?" The Demon King roared out as he waved and slammed Chayote about, swinging her with his elongated limb and smashing through every obstacle, every upright wall of a building, every stone he could find while scanning the ruined wasteland with his eyes. King Piccolo concluded his surprise attack with the old spin and release trick, tossing Chayote through a handful more rocks and letting her leave a dragging tunnel on the ground where she landed.

"I mean…" Chayote writhed and coughed up some blood before sitting up and picking herself back up on her feet. "You just stood there and fired that thing at me, I might have felt too banged up to interrupt it but you didn't expect me to just take it and die, did you?" she chuckled to herself in defiance of her opponent's will to destroy her.

The Saiyan cupped her hands together. Of all things, she had expected to rely on this technique the least. Still, her other maneuvers were all close-distance strikes and rush attacks that relied on her physical superiority over her opponents. She was more injured and tired now than she'd ever been on Earth or all throughout her life. It would have been a naïve mistake to rely on more Pinto or Lima Spears to do seal the deal now, at least with the Demon King's current state where he was more pissed than close to dying.

"Ka…Me!" Chayote chanted. "Ha… Me!"

"What's this now!?" the Demon King froze for a second. It took him a decent amount of time to realize that this wasn't the Mafuba that he was being targeted by but by the time that he had realized that it was too late to counterattack. Chayote thrust her arms forth and let out a triumphant yell from the bottom of her chest.

"Ha!" as a white, blinding, destructive Ki wave streamed forth from Chayote's hands. The beam spiraled onward, emitting a high-pitched squeak as it stunned the old Demon King, leaving him very little time to react. The Demon King parted his hands to the side and yelled out just before the beam consumed him and he took the full brunt of the blast.

Chayote's hands took a powerless plunge down afterward as she stared at the settling smoke and the tunnel that her very own Kamehameha wave had left. This was the only time that she could rely on such a technique. A time when she was confident in what she was doing and truly happy. No longer did her Ki control fail her, it was now that she truly could begin to carve her own path of a martial artist…

"What was that exactly?" a disgusting chuckle made Chayote sigh in disappointment when she realized that the Demon King stood behind a wall of smoke and dusted his tattered clothes off of the rubble that she had thrown at him. "Seemed like a decent enough smokescreen for you to flee after but you forgot the fleeing part, it seems…" the Demon King let out a confident laugh from the bottom of his lungs, just to make Chayote realize how truly outmatched she was when the all the tricks were used out and the fight got to the final stages when both of their feet were against the razor's edge and only power mattered.

Why? Why did she have to die again, just when she began carving her own path!?


	69. Chayote's Great Pinch!

"You've scared me just now." King Piccolo cracked his knuckles and charged on. He barely even tried at this point, Chayote's eyes could follow him without much trouble but her body felt too sloppy to move in time. The aged Demon King threw an elbow strike straight at the core of Chayote's face, throwing the Saiyan off her feet. Immediately after connecting with the elbow, the Demon King transitioned his strike into a backhanded smash as he raised the upper hand he had just used for the strike and then smacked Chayote again with a wide slap of his hand.

Before Chayote could snap into her senses, still reeling in pain, the Demon King proceeded to slide in under her feet, performing something in the middle of flying and dashing while he finished his punishment with a stiff kick that drove his wooden boot so deep up Chayote's abdomen she lost track of it, feeling only that her lower body went completely numb.

King Piccolo's arm reached out to yank Chayote back to being close and personal, extending to extraordinary lengths to catch her by her face and drag her all the way back. The Demon King opened his mouth which lit up with a shiny aura that revealed some of the deeper intricacies of Piccolo's mouth, much to the chagrin of any opponent he might have shown this move to. Before the Demon King could detonate his mouth blast right in Chayote's face, the Saiyan kicked her foot up and shut his mouth up, causing a gruesome-sounding reaction but before Chayote could exclaim the glee of her little success, the Demon King shut it down with a headbutt that sent her rolling back.

"I had thought that the technique you were preparing for was the Mafuba. It had sealed me away once…" the Demon King elaborated on his previous thought after the surprise attack.

"Are you kidding me? There's no way a Saiyan would use a lame technique like that… The only way this fight will end is when I destroy you!" Chayote declared, panting and crouched over in pain, still clutching for her mid-section with a distraught expression.

"Destroy me?" King Piccolo laughed out from the bottom of his chest. "If you weren't this damn strong, I'd have kept you around as my broken fool just for such a nice joke. Maybe it's because of Kami's wisdom inside me but… I do recognize that given some more years for growth, you'd be a challenge to me eventually."

"I'm feeling like plenty of a challenger right now!" Chayote lied, charging on ahead. She'd have seen enough of this fight to drop all sense of planning aside. She'd not think her way from this in a hundred years and sometimes the best way to beat an opponent an inch or two stronger was to just let loose and go berserk.

Her punch connected with a resounding thud that sounded effective but the Demon King continued to smirk as his face just barely moved to the side, his wrinkly and dry cheek had absorbed most of Chayote's fist into the saggy skin. After just a blink of whiting out, the excited and beady eyes of the Demon King turned back to Chayote.

The Demon King scooped her out of mid-air by her collar and unleashed a storm on her face with his right fist. His arm operated like a hydraulic face, smashing up and down repeatedly. The non-stop screeching of black and white in Chayote's eyes lit up with red sparks when her mind could even register that another blow had landed but truthfully she skipped them by the dozens, blacking out for a few moments after each successive impact.

The female Saiyan grunted in pain, shocked by something profoundly hot hitting her square in the face and sending her flying. When her mind popped back into the fight, she noticed that a red glow of ocular beams had sent her tunneling through the devastated wasteland that was once Central City. Noticing that his opponent had snapped back to some sense, the Demon King intensified his eye beams, forcing her to transition into a full-on scream and leave an even nastier streak of dirt behind her.

"I admit I might have jumped the gun with my Explosive Demon Wave before. It's just that nobody has ever pushed me far enough to use that move in years… After regaining my freedom, in my aged body, I wasn't even sure I could even perform that move, it was only when I forced my do-gooder side to join back with me that I knew I had to try. I'd blow you to ashes if I used it now but… Every ounce of power I waste on you is power that my reincarnation will lose." The old Demon King pondered out loud seeing how Chayote was grunting and writhing on the ground, of little threat to him even if she did manage to pick herself back up.

* * *

"Will you listen for once, you blind lunatic, you'll spell out the doom for our entire universe!" a familiar voice croaked just behind Demon King Piccolo. The ancient slug-man looked around, finding himself in a realm different from reality, a void of complete blackness inside his own mind. A realm in which his involuntary fusee was trapped in after Shenron fulfilled his wish.

"So, you've managed to reach me? The end for this old body must not be too far away, either that or I've let myself get too absorbed with that brat…" King Piccolo postured over Kami, turning around to face him.

"I'm not objecting to what you're doing. Truth be told, I had it coming for a long time, with how I've cheated into my position as Kami. A young man has recently opened my mind and I would have liked to try and redeem myself for that but my penance is to be served this way, that's fine as well. Someone will rise to oppose you eventually, even if you do subjugate humanity. However, whatever you do, you cannot kill Chayote." Kami pleaded with his fusee, having mustered all of the inner strength present within Demon King Piccolo's body to even manifest to him in such a way.

"I've sensed you to be in a real fritz. Like I've never sensed you before since the moment I started fighting that girl. Why does her death trouble you far more than all those other people I've wasted?" the Demon King wondered, while he'd have normally not skipped a beat to mock his fusee, his curiosity now took first place over his desire to gloat and declare his triumph in front of him who had rejected the Demon King like some tumor.

"Chayote… She's a special case. Haven't you wondered for a second why a Saiyan is fighting you on Earth? She's been sent here by the higher deities to stay safe until the scores of each universe stabilize. I don't have the time to explain to you the specifics but… She's worth a great lot of points, if you kill her – the entire universe will get deleted." Kami groaned.

"The entire universe, you say…" the Demon King leaned back and scratched his chin. "It stinks of a bluff to me but… You have been acting in an extremely weird way as if… As if the universe truly was at stake…"

* * *

Before King Piccolo could realize it, Chayote floated over his head in mid-air and kicked him square in the cheek, sending the Demon King reeling back in pain as he failed to power up and tank the hit properly having dropped his guard in front of Kami. The foot of the young Saiyan tapped the ground just for a second before she jumped up to King Piccolo's chest and spun around like a whirligig in a flurry of punches and kicks. The Saiyan girl even employed her tail into the deed, further throwing the Demon King off his game.

"Go to hell!" Chayote yelled out as she threw her hands up and let all of her remaining Ki that she's managed to muster up while writhing on the ground like a pathetic maggot out of her in a mighty explosive wave, not too much different in the Demon King's own devastating explosive wave earlier but much denser and inflicting its destructive effects on a far smaller scale.

When the Saiyan ran out of juice and began falling down, feeling weak in the legs that failed to maintain her stance any longer, her face pleading the planet she resided in for more air in her lungs as well as just a tiny bit more power from her body, King Piccolo just observed her collapsing in front of him, completely unharmed even though she stood right beside Chayote when the wave went off.

"You're making it extremely difficult to spare your pathetic life…" the Demon King admitted before picking the girl up by her hair off the ground to look her in her waning eyes. "However, if you die, there will be no more world and, in fact, no more universe for my reincarnation to rule over. For that reason, I am forced to keep you alive and create my reincarnation as someone who craves growing stronger, just like you loathsome humans do."

King Piccolo lightly tossed Chayote higher and locked his grip around her neck, squeezing the powerless Saiyan for some more sweet torment before proceeding to punch her in the face and her abdomen as a way to vent his frustration that he was not allowed to snuff out this one martial artist. No, it was far more personal than that…

"What cruel irony, I, the scorn of all martial artists will be forced to reincarnate into a martial artist myself, just so my enemy does not surpass me in strength given time." King Piccolo cursed his destiny as he continued to rampage with his fists all over every free ounce of flesh in the body of the powerless opponent he could find. "Remember this moment, remember throwing all you had against the mighty Demon King Piccolo and finding your pathetic strength nowhere near enough. Remember being humiliated and destroyed. Let that experience inspire some fear into you, it will make you more human that way, you'll get along with the folks here better."

With one, pent up and channeled power strike to the gut, the Demon King sent Chayote's battered, humiliated and bruised body flying to something that would have served as her shallow grave amongst the ashes of Central City had he put just a tiny bit more power into his punch.

"What a lucky brat, danced the devil swing under the full moon and lived to tell the tale..." the Demon King spat aside, resisting the urge to spit at his semi-conscious opponent because of some inner bugger that kept pestering him not to do so. This recent resurfacing of Kami within him just proved that he needs to complete the imperfect fusion process by assimilating that old coot into his reincarnation as part of his natural genotype.

A mean growl made the Demon King freeze out of instinct and take a wary peek back. While the initial visual inspection didn't reveal too much difference from what he had left behind, suggesting the thought that the girl merely recovered some semblance of conscience and cried out over the pain emanating all over her broken body, when the tremendous escalation of Ki began, even the Demon King was forced to turn his full attention toward the matter.

Chayote was back on her feet, growling and grinding her teeth that were beginning to grow sharper and more pronounced where she bore full-on fangs from her gums. Instead of the usual whited out expression of utter defeat she donned previously, now only eyes full of unbridled rage and limitless wrath let out a scarlet gleam making it impossible to tell who exactly was the object of the girl's ire. Her hair began growing wilder, in the front, behind and even areas where humans should not have fostered hair but before her transformation would appear unnatural for a human, her shape began morphing into something more suited for such a hairy appearance – a giant ape monster.

"A… A giant ape!?" the Demon King trembled in fear over both the titanic size of his reborn opponent as well as the Ki that the creature possessed. A power that seemed to continue rising so high up that not even the Demon King could register it anymore, to him the beast just seemed like someone to flee from, something capable of utterly decimating his dream for world domination if she turned her mountain-sized fists toward him.

"Wh… What is this? This must be the girl's true form… She did mention that she wasn't human, she looked human to me so… Maybe her appearance was some sort of glamor technique? I see… It makes sense that a girl wouldn't want to be seen in such a hideous form!" before the Demon King could finish pondering on the nature of this unexpected transformation he found himself ground to stone and dirt when the gigantic ape stomped him to bits with speed appearing blinding to King Piccolo.

It was only when the ape lifted off its colossal foot and some air washed away the blood all over the squished Demon King that Piccolo realized the trouble he was in. His enemy had increased her power tenfold and appeared to be more brutal, more uncontrollable and vigorous than even in her human form. The black shadow moved onto him, the Demon King closed his eyes and moved his limbs in to try and block the incoming stomp, lacking any other efficient way to avoid certain smashing death.

The foot had missed him, instead, the great ape found a devastated wall of a building and lifted it up above only to smash it over its head, letting the crumbling rain of debris shower it. Even if the beast hadn't healed any of its injuries as streaks of red extended from its gleaming crimson eyes and nostrils, this gigantic ape monster was more than powerful enough to utterly decimate King Piccolo's dreams then and there, if only it wasn't so mindless and stupid and focused more on the job at hand…

The Demon King hopped up on his feet and dashed aside, trying to get further away from the monster's immediate smash zone while the ape continued to roar, fire off wild beams of energy aside and pound its own chest, stopping to cough up blood as its ribs were certainly busted but the beast was too dumb to stop beating itself over it.

"This is it… I cannot defeat this monster, no matter what… Not even the Explosive Demon Wave would do any damage, I'd just be wasting the inheritance of my reincarnation for nothing! Darn it! I should have killed her when I had the chance, curse you, Kami!" the Demon King clutched his fists until his nails drew blood from his own hands and ground his teeth until a taste of blood left his gums. A vein popped in the eye of the old Demon King but even the irritating itch and a red tint to his vision didn't stop the furious King Piccolo from yelling out in frustration.

His own unrestricted rage was his undoing as the ape had noticed his fury and turned its own toward him, kicking at the ground beneath its feet to send flying rocks at the Demon King while it made its way closer to where it could smash him to bits or pick the Demon King up and squeeze the paste out through his orifices. The mindless nature of this beast suggested the wildest and gruesome ways it would choose to murder its opponents…

More than happy to find an outlet for his rage, King Piccolo blasted the airborne debris and placed his arms by his side, panting heavily and awaiting his final stand as the sky-scraping beast approached him from the horizon, covering the moonlight in shadow.

"Damn you, you filthy beast! I was just inches away, I was ready to claw and scratch, I would have even reincarnated myself as a martial art…" the Demon King froze and stared at his old, trembling hand in shock. It was then that the wildest idea dawned on him. He extended his hand forward and yelled out, ready to sacrifice whatever power this would cost for his reincarnation, as long as his sons and he could continue to live on. Anything for survival, even methods as wild as this…

"Materialize!" the Demon King roared out as a jolt of electrical Ki left his arm and discharged nearby his feet. When the beam stopped emitting blinding light, a new rice cooker laid open before him. "You must have given me this idea, you bastard… You knew that technique, didn't you, it's only fair that I doom the one and only martial artist I cannot kill to this fate…"

As the ape cocked its fist back, ready to pound and smash the Demon King into a bloody stain, King Piccolo extended his hands out toward it, as if trying to embrace the great ape when, in fact, he was trying to do anything but that. A wave of green energy whirled out from the Demon King's side, consuming the entirety of the titanic monster and forcing it back. Not even the awesome great ape monster could defeat the mystical energies of the Mafuba, it seemed. With the wildest of grins, the Demon King waved his hands toward the open electrical rice cooker, smashing the ray of the expansive wave inside while the rest of it followed. Once the entirety of the beast fit into the container, lingering with mysterious emerald shine from within the cooker itself, the Demon King kicked its lid down shut.

He would have laughed out in his victory if the cost of using this technique didn't force him to his knees. King Piccolo huffed and panted and sweat ran wild across his aged visage, mixing it with his purple blood that the great ape monster drew in spades by stomping onto the Demon King with its stinking feet. King Piccolo closed his eyes, feeling up the totality of his life force that brimmed inside, feeling almost half of it fading away at once just to use this technique but… No matter how hard he wanted it, he couldn't force the reincarnation.

For such a momentous victory, this fight felt like the most undignified of defeats. He had squandered so much of his power forever, forcing his reincarnation to start out weaker than he'd have been, and, to top it all off, the strain he had suffered in his mighty fused body was not enough to bring him close to death to even call for reincarnation now. If he was to spit out a son at this moment, it would be just another son of his and not a true reincarnation. For that reason, he just lost all that strength for nothing… Maybe if he was still young his strength would have eventually returned but with his old body – strength only left, it never returned. His final moment would have to wait, his reincarnation would have to wait.

To compensate for that loss, he truly would need to make his reincarnation a true martial artist. Just so he could grow in power and eventually cover for the strength he'd lost here today. At least Kami's wisdom that ended up saving the day here would still serve him. The Demon King sneered at the rice cooker the moment he could stand with a death-inducing stare but he knew he couldn't destroy it, lest he let the monster out again. He'd need to hide this thing somewhere far away, somewhere nobody could find and unseal it again just like those three buffoons unsealed him. If this ape-girl remained on Earth, she'd eventually be found by one hopeful fool or another.

It was time for the Demon King that had absorbed Kami within him to ascend the God Tower and find a better, deeper place to seal this great ape monster in. Somewhere nobody would ever end up finding it because nobody would even know to look there! On top of that, it only felt poetic sealing a self-proclaimed non-human outside the dimension she was visiting…


	70. Beginning of the End

King Piccolo panted, feeling strength leaving his body long after his battle had concluded. The Demon King pressed his wrinkly, shriveled hand to his chest and bent forward. Strain reverberated through his body. Veins pulsing with weak passages of blood became evident on his forehead as the demonic one belched a couple of times, coming out with mere pickle-tasting spit each time before something more solid, something rocky began emerging from inside him.

This couldn't have been helped. He had to reduce his power even more, that was an even greater waste, a true loan for his eventual successor but it was necessary. He was about to enter enemy territory and he had no idea if that fool Mr. Popo had come up with some wicked scheme to defeat him yet. He needed to be ready, he needed to emanate strength so it was time to see what his new generation of children could do. The egg wriggled further and further up the soaked with the contents of Piccolo's stomach mouth before dropping on the ground unceremoniously, marinating in the biological juices that soaked it.

Then the stony shell of the egg cracked, a massive shape emerged from within the egg, a demon so thick and muscular that immediately after he emerged from his egg it seemed impossible that he had ever fit there at all. The emerged child of the Demon King cracked his knuckles, his face resembled that of a frog in base features as well as the green coloring and the greasy skin that soaked him all over. It was a fatso of pointy ears and a razor-like bone protrusion at the center of its head, resembling a fusion of sorts between both of his now-perished brothers.

"Your name is Drum… Your King needs your help." King Piccolo exclaimed in a husky voice as the feat of producing a child still strained his body greatly, stretching his ribcage, his throat, and his airways when such a thing should not have been happening. It was as if his entire biology rejected the Demon's desire for heirs to the empire he would soon come to claim.

"How may I serve?" Drum wondered shortly after chuckling.

"You are the first child produced after my merging with Kami. You should, therefore, possess both of our powers, you are a mutant abomination that the Evil Tribe should reject and kill on sight, however, you will be the one to rule it, alongside my eventual reincarnation. For now, I need you to use your power to heal me," the Demon King declared.

"Heal you? I'm not sure I can do that…" Drum looked at his stubby fingers that crackled with bright electricity.

"Trust me, as my own son, your powers would be purely destructive, however, as one who is both good and evil, your Ki should have the power to both heal and destroy." King Piccolo grumbled at his son, looking bemused that his child didn't blindly trust his word.

"Alright… If you say so… Beam Ray!" Drum extended his hand, letting jolts of electricity pass it a couple of times before zapping his creator with them. Piccolo's body twitched and wriggled in pain as the electricity passed up and down his body but then the evil nature of the lightning became purer as Drum's desire to rejuvenate and not destroy his target began to define the jolt, covering up all of the injuries on the Demon King's body.

"Excellent…" King Piccolo examined his body in surprise. He had never expected that Kami's abilities present in his sons would be quite this useful and powerful. "Please accompany me on my journey. You are now my most trusted and beloved son, you shall remain in that treasured position until the end of my rule when the stars go cold. Not even in my future reincarnations shall my gratitude for your devotion fade."

Drum just chuckled to himself with a goofy grin. He was not the brightest tool in the book but Great Demon King Piccolo loved him nevertheless. He did not plan on creating more subordinates until after his reincarnation but if he walked on the God's Temple bleeding and bruised, he would just court more trouble and challenge from one human after another. For all of their damned weakness, humans bred rapidly and they were as numerous as locusts. Their resolve to survive and desperation to resist extinction only grew in moments of crisis, that much Piccolo could remember very well from his heyday.

"Let's go, Drum, to God's Temple!" Demon King Piccolo proclaimed as the two rose to the skies, leaving the devastated crater of Central City in their wake. Before taking off, however, King Piccolo glared down and let his eyes light up with scorching heat that he beamed down upon the crater, carving the remains of his rampage with his demonic insignia which read "Devil".

* * *

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, the gravest of news this early in the morning – Central City, the capital of our great world has been destroyed. We have absolutely no idea who or what might have caused this untold destruction as the greatest threat to our way of life – the Red Ribbon Army has been destroyed for almost a decade. Was it a splinter group of surviving Red Ribbon Army officials, we cannot say, from what is within our knowledge, nobody has made any claims or declarations. Of anything valuable amongst the rubble that could begin to help us piece together what has happened – only the kanji of "Devil" scorched and burning beyond the capability of the emergency services to put it out. What could this mean, for now, we cannot say, but stay tuned for further developments as we will continue to report on the situation…"

Before the news anchor could finish saying his farewells, the window burst into thousands of tiniest shards and a handful of thugs burst in, grabbing the television set and simply walking out of the shop with it in hand. The plug of the television set snapped off of the outlet in the wall as the thugs were fleeing the scene while the elderly owner of the shop was not there to defend his property. The man had fled upon the first echo of the news that the world government was utterly annihilated in one cruel act of destruction. Fled to protect his family as humanity had now received a grim reminder that the devil was real and that it was loose. Whether an actual demon flying around and bringing up just about fire and brimstone or the more figurative and philosophical manifestation of the worst humanity had to offer.

Shootouts on the streets as rampant gangs of thugs fought over each other for loot and power. Those same gangs elected their leaders and carried them over their heads, those same leaders quickly became an easy target for fire from opposing gangs only for new leaders to take their place because the glory of being in charge of what seemed like the entire world now, even if just for a second before one's brains got blown out, beat out fading into obscurity as part of the casualty statistics.

A herd of stockbrokers burst forth from their glass cage, a handful of them approached the band of bandits and straight out punched a few of them out with crazy, bloodshot eyes. Those that did not immediately get gunned down in the chaos, picked up explosive devices and high-caliber weaponry and decided to go out in a blaze of glory once their entire livelihood went out in flames. With the world government truly gone and only the sign of "Devil" blazing on for eternity in the place of the world throne, with the King and all his cronies dead, the stock market was officially frozen and all stocks rendered absolutely worthless basically overnight.

The world had gone to bed peacefully, ready for another day and looking forward to a night of peaceful slumber and rest but woke up to the end of everything as it knew it. Before its future reincarnated king even rose to tend to his flock, the world began tearing itself apart all by itself without needing any guidance from a demonic tyrant or permission for the humans to tear at each other's throats.

Loud grunts emanated from the Capsule Corps building in West City. Bandits hurled across and burst through the walls as a tall, Frankenstein-monster-like looking man in the Capsule Corps security uniform loomed over the defeated stockbrokers, bandits and murderers. The other security personnel rushed to secure the building from the unconscious lowlifes trying to loot and plunder the high and mighty Capsule Corp, a corporation that was quickly beginning to rise the most cutting edge and successful technological marvel of its time and managed to somehow pull through the coming apocalypse due to the ingenuity of its key figures and the broad shoulders of Artificial Human No. 8 who worked to repay the favor of Bulma and Dr. Briefs for removing the bomb present inside him.

People that had still not lost their minds hurried inside the dome in the center of the West City. Capsule Corps might have just been the only safe place in the entirety of West City however that was just provided that whatever calamity befell Central City did not follow suit onto the West City too. Further to the south-east, poor and devastated villagers cradled into a mountain that burnt in flames that had covered its surface long before the disaster befell the entire world. A tremendous colossus wearing bull's horns accompanied by a little girl loomed over the wickedness that threatened to invade their mountain and threaten the petrified people inside that had enough existential dread to comprehend to deal with the wickedness of man at the moment.

The roads of every city became clogged with flying cars, the monorail systems stopped functioning making the early morning trains smash right through the sky-high rails and smash down below as a fireball of boiling metal, glass, and steel. The agony of people using the public commute only served to worsen the situation of those attempting to flee to the untamed wilderness by car. The criminal element of various anthropomorphic bandits had now made their way into the cities, smelling potential mayhem and surrounding every city with walls of scumbaggery that awaited to further test the luck of those that had successfully approached the edge of their native cities.

The communication systems were all down, it had been one large piece of a sensitive card house ripped out that caused the entire structure to topple and now each city should have had their constituency take charge but no such thing happened for there was no government institution to enforce public power anymore. Every policeman and policewoman, every public official or politician had fled to tend to their own damn selves and their families, leaving it all to burn, leaving it all to end and those that did not quickly succumbed to the whirlpool of flames and madness that devastated the civilized parts of the world. There was no more king of the world, no more world security force and nothing resembling organization in the entire structure of the government, the only organizations available were those of the criminal element and even those relished in the resulting chaos.

The political issues that had merely simmered before the coming of the "Devil" now rose to the surface. The criminal gangs, as well as the equipped civilians, all began firing upon the anthropomorphic animals on sight, due to the violence of the boar and bear bandit gangs in the countryside, moving in on the centers of every city and village on the map. The violent and uncontrollable actions of the wicked few fueled persecution and bigotry toward everyone donning fur, fangs or scales, anyone that as much as waggled a tail found themselves on the bad end of a gun barrel or with a sword or a knife pressed to their throats. The violence against the common evil was a rare occasion on which the frightful flock of civilians agreed and worked together with the criminal element of the city.

The world had skipped a few beats and went on right to the end without there ever needing to be an architect for the destruction. In a way, the nonsensical nature of it all perhaps just aided the insanity of the rising apocalypse further.

* * *

Mr. Popo rushed out from the palace of the God's Temple to confront the rice-cooker bearing Great Demon King and his lackey. In the presence of this evil on his temple, even a genie such as Mr. Popo sweat profusely but he was prepared to defend that which he was meant to protect. He had not yet found the next guardian yet, after all.

"What are you two doing here!?" he bellowed.

"Perhaps I have come to take my rightful seat as the Earth's guardian?" King Piccolo bore his fangs upon the genie in an excited and mocking smile. Drum chuckled into his hands, covering his face like a mindless monkey beside his overlord.

"That is impossible! Earth's guardian must be pure of heart, you'd have to split yourself of all evil and that would not happen either, because evil is all that you are!" Mr. Popo pointed a thick, black, accusatory finger at the Demon King. "Kami-sama was good and kind. He used his power only to create things. He even gave humans back their moon when they destroyed it, you only use your power to destroy things. Look at what you've left of the world!"

King Piccolo turned around and stared at the world beneath his feet with closed eyes. Despite there being nothing but clouds and thick, rare atmospheric air up here, he saw it all from the top of this temple. He saw the fruits of his "Devil" mark and what chaos it had inspired in the world. The Demon King opened his mouth in pleasant surprise and spread out his hands as if intending to embrace his new domain.

"Ah! What beauty! Humans… I have underestimated your penchant for chaos and death. What glorious fire, what delectable death to justice you've all wrought. You've made your father very proud, sheep, at this moment, smelling these ashes of your making, we are all now Evil Tribe!" The Demon King laughed out into the sky, spreading the glee of the Devil for all humanity to hear so that they could draw inspiration for vile acts from that despicable, powerful resonance.

"Despicable!" Mr. Popo exclaimed.

"Don't get all soft on me, genie. I'm just here to enter the Room of Spirit and Time." King Piccolo turned around and extended the hand that held the rice-cooker that he sealed Great Ape Chayote in. "You should know who's in here, a secret weapon you meant to eradicate me with, hmm? Well, well… I'm almost a little bit proud, if you kneel before me and praise me, I might consider giving Piano's position to you…"

"Mr. Popo would rather put an end to you here and now!" Mr. Popo exclaimed and took charge at the Demon King. Drum blinked and appeared in between the Demon King and Mr. Popo, swatting the genie aside with a backhanded smack. The eruption of violence only made Drum lick his lips and chuckle. He enjoyed the destructive side of his powers far more than the healing side.

"Nevertheless, I will enter the Room of Spirit and Time and place this rice-cooker inside. Then, I'll destroy the gateway forever so that nobody can ever find this woman." The Demon King hissed at Popo who writhed on the ground, physical power had a lesser effect on the magical entity but it was still capable of stopping him if sufficient physical power was exerted into the matter.

"Fine. Mr. Popo will show you to the Room of Spirit and Time. You may enter it freely…" Mr. Popo stood up and dusted his clothes. Placing his hands on the flaps of his extravagant vest as he began slowly walking toward the Room of Spirit and Time.

"Hmm? I did not expect it to come so easily… I had thought that Drum would have to fry you a little bit more before you'd submit to my will…" King Piccolo admitted with a bit of disappointment to his voice. "Oh well… I'm not sure if it's that darned goodness of Kami affecting my dry, old heart but… I can't be mad at someone who submits to me by their own free will. You should obey me more often, genie, who knows, maybe I'll let you select the next guardian and let you two play your measly little game then? After all, Kami did jack shit the last time I ruled over the world…"

Drum chuckled to himself as if he could recall those days when, in fact, he was just born mere hours ago. The Demon King and his son followed the genie all throughout the corridors of the palace at the God's Temple and its endless halls for what seemed like entire hours but King Piccolo didn't seem to object, while Drum enjoyed the opportunity to add more hours to his lifespan. It was like the Great Demon King could smell the destruction that humans wrought upon this world while in this temple and he reveled in that destruction, therefore not minding Mr. Popo's stalling.

The genie stopped and opened an old, wooden door, encrusted with golden ornaments all over, pointing at the white void inside with an apathetic smile. It was a look that seemed oddly familiar to King Piccolo, must have been Kami's own experiences washing over him… King Piccolo stared at the fill of endless white for a moment before attempting to enter. Mr. Popo, Drum and the Great Demon King entered the temple of the Room of Spirit and Time and felt immediately the adverse effects of the room.

Loud, resonant bangs emanated in the distance, bringing shock to the Demon King's face. He could identify those noises, those blurs, and thuds. This was… Martial arts. He turned to Mr. Popo and picked the plump genie off the ground, raising his hand over the Demon King's head and letting it light up with lightning crackles.

"What is the meaning of this!? What has been going on here!?" he cried out in fury. Before King Piccolo could as much as blink, Mr. Popo was no longer in his grip, the Demon King just examined the torn shred of cloth that remained in his elongated nails before turning to the endless void ahead, where he had intended to hide the rice-cooker.

Further down in the white space ahead stood a pair of youths wearing torn, orange gi with the "Turtle" insignia on them. The boys were covered in bruises but they seemed happy and excited more than anything. The one of the duo with spiky, black hair on his head placed Mr. Popo beside him on the ground and pointed at the Demon King Piccolo, right behind him, a tail waggled, just like the one that the young woman had sticking out of her own bottom.

"Say, say… Who's that?" Goku wondered.

"It's him…" Krillin declared, setting his sights on Drum – a spitting, fatter image of the demonic spawn that killed him due to a nasty trick before. "It's the Evil Tribe, that means that the big, shriveled guy must be King Piccolo!"

"That's Great Demon King Piccolo to you, human!" Drum exclaimed, pointing his weighty finger at Krillin with a wicked grin on his noseless face.

So… You're the one who had Krillin killed, huh?" Goku looked at the Demon King with a look that slowly morphed from excitement of a fun sparring session and the crystal clarity of training and growing stronger into a simmering, controlled fit of anger. "The one who killed Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu, Bulma and the rest?"

"I also sealed your friend into this rice-cooker here too. So what if I am the Great Demon King Piccolo?!" the Demon King raised his eyebrow.

"I'm gonna send you flying for what you did!" Goku pressed his knuckles by his sides, newfound aura of power burst forth from his childish body, rustling his hair and sending the entire visible area of the Room of Spirit and Time into a hectic caprice of natural conditions, sending earthquakes across the entire surface, arcs of flames and showers of rain as well as turbulent twisters racing across the place while aurora borealis gleamed over the heads of the Evil Tribe and the remaining pair of Earth's defenders that would oppose them.

The final battle for Earth's fate was about to take place inside the Room of Spirit and Time!


	71. The Hot Fruits of Krillin's Training

"Send me flying, you say?" King Piccolo showed his fangs with a mocking grin. "I'm glad that I had Drum heal me before coming here. If I am to pummel another Saiyan into a pulp, I can use that extra vitality!"

"Another Saiyan?" Krillin wondered before his attention turned to the rice-cooker that King Piccolo was cradling under his arm. "That wouldn't by any chance be…"

"That's right, that Saiyan girl…" King Piccolo crossed his arms and raised his head, brimming with vanity in front of the two kids, he waited for them to lose their cool but when they didn't he just thundered out in laughter, never being one who waited for some company to enjoy himself. "I've used the same sealing technique that once imprisoned me, such poetic justice. If only I could have used it on Mutaito himself…"

"Chayote?" Goku clenched his fists. "That's it, I'm definitely kicking your ass now!"

"Calm down, Goku, if Piccolo escaped from his captivity, so can Chayote. I bet we just need to bust that rice-cooker." Krillin pointed at the kitchen appliance resting in Piccolo's hands. "Patience got you this far already, it can help you free Chayote too!"

"You seem far too calm for kids in the presence of the Great Demon King Piccolo. Then again, you spent so much time hiding here and doing nothing that perhaps you aren't aware of the glorious chaos I have wrought upon the world… Let me help you by bringing you a little bit of that sweet hell in this endless void as well." King Piccolo spread his hands and then leaned into a fighting position. Having bested Chayote and then being rejuvenated did wonders for already looming confidence of the Demon King.

"I can kill too, let me fight!" Drum clapped his palms at his chest erratically, feeling impatient. "Using my powers to heal makes me sick, I wanna fry someone too!"

"Very well then, you can fight it out with that bald kid to your heart's delight. A Saiyan might not be an opponent you are quite prepared for…" Demon King Piccolo nodded.

"Krillin…" Goku said and then entered a fighting stance.

"Right!" Krillin nodded. "I'll take the creepy fatso so you can settle things with Piccolo."

"Thanks…" Goku nodded with a gentle mumble. He wasn't used to fighting alongside Krillin. More times than not he took enemies on all by himself and when Krillin came into the picture they were fighting in the World Martial Arts Tournament. It was a novel feeling but Goku seemed to enjoy it very much, judging by his delighted expression.

Drum's image became blurry, with a murky shift, the demon spawn moved further into the Room of Spirit and Time before stopping to pant. The chubby demon tilted his head to look behind him and see where his opponent was and if he wasn't too confused by where Drum had gone, he did use his top speed and the speed of demons was not for the eyes of mere humans to keep up with.

"Where are you looking?" Krillin's voice reached Drum's oversized, pointy ears, forcing the demonic titan to turn around and drop his jaw. The little baldy was standing right in front of him, as if he had gotten here before even Drum did and as if he was in no way at all inconvenienced by the tremendous gravity inhibiting Drum's hi-speed movement.

"Heh, I see… You guessed my intention to move here and moved ahead of me. You even had time to catch your breath so you can just stand here and act cool…" Drum fixed his wristbands with a smirk, buying his own pretty story with the story's prettiness defining only how unlikely it was to have happened.

"No. I've just trained in this place for months now." Krillin flexed his arms with an excited expression. "It was really difficult at first, my body wasn't ready for this place so I had to pretty much cold turkey it… I wouldn't move around too much if I was you, you need to get used to the gravity of this place or else you're gonna get winded all the time or sprain something."

"Don't lecture me, shorty!" Drum yelled out and rushed at Krillin with a fist raised over his head. Much to his chagrin, the bald shorty was no longer where Drum's eyes had left him when his massive fist pounded the ground under his feet. A strong tap to the back of his head sent Drum tumbling over his front so hard that he completed a full roll before getting back on one knee with his feet on the bottom side.

"Of course your weight doesn't help things…" Krillin shrugged after landing nonchalantly behind Drum and then turning around to face his compromised opponent. "I've often had problems moving before I did my stretches after a good eating session…"

"You think you're some kind of a speedster, huh?" Drum smiled with a toothless smirk before his image turned blurry again and the demon began moving at blinding speeds all over the white void around the two. "For your information, I was only born some hours ago and I haven't yet had the time to eat pretty much anything!"

"Not bad…" Krillin observed before Drum's arms appeared behind him and clutched him in the demon's embrace from behind. The face of the teen martial artist stretched out like rubber from the strain he felt inside of Drum's hold as the demonic chubby applied his full force on Krillin. The baldy threw his round head back, smashing it into Drum's ribs and leaving the demon gasping for air before Krillin swept at Drum's feet to leave the fatso flat on the ground while Krillin vaulted back to safety and gave his downed opponent a peace gesture.

"You've got amazing power and you're faster than I'd have thought someone of your build to be…" Krillin admitted. "There's no way I could have held a candle to your power the way I was back then but, as I've told you before, you need to conserve your breath in here. If you didn't spend so much air in your lungs just jumping around and showing off, you'd have withstood that headbutt without wheezing for mercy now."

Krillin's words struck a sensitive chord with Drum who was indeed wheezing for more air at the moment when the martial artist spoke to him. With his disadvantageous position being brought to light, Drum jumped up on his feet though by forcing his straight stance like that, he still stood on wobbly legs and could barely breathe.

"I might not have eaten anything yet, but I think I'll start by chewing the flesh off your bones!" Drum pointed his hand at Krillin. Almost instantly the massive end of his limb lit up with electricity that discharged in the shape of a messy jolt headed Krillin's way. The rather hectic appearance of the Ki attack wasn't a sign of slipping control over Drum's power but a sign of his strength as it made the attack more difficult to avoid. "Beam Ray!" Drum croaked out. In his mind, the frog-like spawn could almost smell Krillin's roasted flesh.

Avoiding the dangerous yet elegant dance of electricity seemed like no matter at all to Krillin, even in the crippling gravity of the Room of Spirit and Time and in the searing heat that manifested itself around the area where the pair were fighting. The heat was just another factor that made Drum's ignorance for proper breathing even harder as at higher temperatures it was much harder to breathe properly as the body employed breathing for ventilation purposes too, making breathing more irregular.

"I see you've already learned to change your Ki into elements. That's amazing, especially if you truly were just born hours ago!" Krillin exclaimed in excitement over Drum's technique that he avoided with minimal trouble.

"Elements? I didn't change nothing, I just wanted to fry you real bad like the shrimp that you are!" Drum clenched his fists and whined out while twitching in anger.

"I see… It took us a while to learn that. We never thought that Ki could have been used that way but… It seems that there's more to Ki than we've thought. It can be hot and cold, it can shake the ground underneath your feet or make the oceans swirl. Even lightning can be tamed with Ki. I think that might be something Mr. Popo wanted us to learn though, that's why he placed us in such a horrible place." Krillin looked around as his Ki flared up in a controlled aura stream covering the entire body of the young man. Drum took a step back and entered his fighting stance as if preparing for Krillin's incoming attack but the baldy just laughed out and rubbed the back of his head.

"Oh, don't worry, I'm not attacking just yet. I just calmed my mind down so the flow of my Ki could cool me down a bit. If you've actually learned to manipulate Ki well, you could also cool yourself down like that. That's how we've learned to cope with this place – our Ki warmed us up when the place froze up, it cooled us down when things got way too hot." Krillin shrugged. Drum clicked his tongue in frustration.

"Sorry, the air seems to have stabilized now, there's no need for my mind to stay calm, I can let loose a little bit…" Krillin declared and got serious, entering his own fighting stance before taking a blinding dash at his opponent.

Drum put his hands up to protect himself but Krillin went right past them, shifting into the visible spectrum only upon appearing right in front of Drum's face and kicking him in the chin. The highly malleable flesh of the demon spawn made Drum's face deform from Krillin's kick and resemble raw dough that had just suffered the chef's wrath. The flurry of Krillin's fists continued to morph Drum's face as they ran rampant across both cheeks of the demonic fatso who continued to stand in place with both his palms raised up. Krillin roared out as he flipped over his front to finish his combination of blows with a heel drop to the spiky part of Drum's head.

Where one would have considered such a target of attack reckless, Krillin's leg appeared to suffer little to no damage from the ruthless strike whereas Drum's bony and edged protrusion suffered a great deal, becoming cracked and fractured with bits of the spikes snapping off and scattering all over the place. Krillin took a careful dash back right after landing beside Drum and continued to observe his downed opponent.

"Stop trying to trick me, you won't deceive me, I can sense your Ki!" Krillin yelled out at Drum who just twitched after a moment of stonewalling Krillin's declaration and then began picking his beaten body off the floor. Just as Drum picked himself up and got himself on his feet, the demonic spawn began molding his mangled face with his own two hands until it resembled his old appearance with the bonus of bloody streaks extending over his face.

"That was an impressive attack for a human…" Drum laughed out and tried wiping the leakage of his purple body fluid off of his face.

"I must admit, you demons picked up in strength since the last one I fought. Though without innocent people to threaten me with, you still don't seem that scary…" Krillin smirked. "That's too bad, I was all kinds of excited to get to cut loose and fight with the full power I've accumulated in here."

"You're saying you're not fighting seriously?" Drum raised the fleshy stump that would have been where his eyebrows grew if he had any. "Interesting, but I think you're bluffing. It must be taking everything you've got to lay it on me like that, little human."

"I didn't say I wasn't fighting seriously, I'm just not fighting with my full power." Krillin declared and then straightened his body. "If you want to try and last a second against me while I'm at my full, be my guest…"

A faint, white glow forced around Krillin's body, like an energy-based outline of the young man's body before the emanating power grew in size and intensity, beginning to reach out and burst in wild flow outside of Krillin's body. After just a few moments of letting all of his power out, Krillin tightened all the muscles in his body and had to yell out to release all of the pent up tension from his body. Power such as his felt good but it also hurt a little to fight at full power which was why it was best done after sufficient warm-up.

"Here I go…" Krillin declared before disappearing before Drum's eyes. Being just educated about the difference between their speed, his speed being something Drum was quite proud of, the demon couldn't help it but gawk before Krillin's sliding kick threw him rolling in mid-air. It then took just one solid elbow strike to stop Drum from spinning but just as Krillin leaped up with a rising kick, Drum seemed to evaporate from thin air.

"Tsk… Damn brat, gotten pretty fast…" Drum grumbled to himself while feeling up his hurting shins.

"You're pretty amazing, your rapid movement almost makes it seem like you're warping around…" Krillin declared before turning around to face Drum. Had Drum's shins not been damaged by Krillin's slide, the chubby demon would have likely exploited seeing Krillin's back like that.

"But I'm still faster than you…" Krillin's voice forced Drum freeze for it came from right behind him. Before Drum could even turn around, a sharp throb in his back made his senses black out while Drum's body soared into the air. Spinning like a whirligig, Krillin delivered a crashing kick into Drum's fat abdomen in mid-air. The airborne martial artist delivered a mad flurry of strikes, overwhelming his airborne and utterly pummeled opponent before sending him flying even higher with a vertical kick.

Krillin's aura burst forth from his entire body, sending his flying without the need of solid ground to kick off from, while the baldy continued to throw mad, seemingly random strikes from both his feet and his arms, mixing and changing each one as long as his body could contort that way. It didn't seem like any fighting style that Krillin had studied but it was just a way to flex his awesome full power on his enemy. Drum's eyes burst open, Krillin could almost feel him considering blinking out but it felt so slow that it may as well have been in slow-motion. The martial artist threw both his hands out.

A destructive blast of Ki of a blazing, orange glow blasted Drum away with enough force to crash his battered and broken body farther away in a pool of purple. Krillin landed on his two feet and breathed out heavily, he didn't have much of his full-power left to spare before he would begin growing weary and actually losing strength to keep it up. It would have been for the best if he concluded it with a single, strong strike.

"How was that? Hot, wasn't it?" Krillin mumbled, not caring if his opponent could even hear him anymore. "You said that you'd be the one roasting me so it only felt fitting that I'd heat my Ki up a bit… I've never tried making my Kamehameha hot before so I wonder what would happen…"

The pint-sized warrior cupped his hands in front of him and then took a hefty breath in. "Ka…! Me…! Ha…! Me…!" Krillin chanted as he turned his cupped in front of him hands around and drove them to his side at the very last bit. He could feel Ki surging through his body, the young man focused all of it into his hands like before but he made sure to heat hi Ki up before focusing it.

"Hot-Blooded Kamehameha!" Krillin yelled and threw his hands out. The Kamehameha wave that normally would have blinded with its luminescence and consumed the surroundings with its celeste surges of rampant power now glowed with fiery intensity and its usually high-pitched tones now sounded grungier, like an awakening volcano and blasted off at the enemy with an unusually vibrant flow, creating a mushroom-shaped blast instead of the usual, spherical annihilation it wrought.

When Krillin could, at last, examine the results of his attack, his eyes opened up almost as wide as his relaxed mouth with a twitching lower lip. His entire blast had curled up in a round orb and whirled around inside Drum's mouth while the mushroom cloud crawled to the skies from its mouthful imprisonment, obscuring the bloody sight of Drum's mashed face. With a lick of his tongue and a grumbling gulp, Drum gobbled the restrained fireball down and burped a breath of flames and black smoke out as it refused to go down easy. The demon stumbled on his feet, hurting from the beatdown as well as the uneasy way that he had dealt with the lethal attack of his enemy.

"As if I'll let a mere human do me in like that…" Drum grumbled and began working at his malformed face with his hands to shape it into something more presentable.

"I've never even seen anyone deal with an attack like that, you're a demon alright…" Krillin dragged his wristbands over his face distraught having just fired a great deal of his Ki at the enemy.

"I bet that sudden surge of power left the building and you've wasted a great deal of Ki, attacking me with your strongest technique at full power like that. I'll make you want to have done me in, you runt!" Drum pressed his arms by his sides and clutched his knuckles tightly. Had it not been for demonic physiology and unnatural endurance, possible lack of vital organs in his anatomy, he'd have pretty much been done in by now.

"Big deal," Krillin sighed and entered his fighting stance. "I've beaten you plenty before I kicked it into overdrive, I can finish the job with a little bit of heaviness in my breath just as well."

He tried saying it in a way that would make him believe that because he truly wanted to not only be able to believe it but also for it to be objectively true.


	72. Tough It Out, Goku!

Goku and Piccolo decided to take it to one another almost at the same time. The pair lunged and collided in the middle with Goku's knee meeting Piccolo's elbow and the two lingered at their struggle for what seemed to their perception as the entire eternity. Power surged throughout their entire bodies, resonating in their point of contact before the resolving shockwave sent both of them apart, only to kick back at the enemy and send a flurry of fists and feet their way.

The combatants shifted in and out the ranges of visible perception, colliding to exchange hundreds of blows only to disengage and then go right back at it again. In the beginning, neither of the pair gave way but in what King Piccolo thought as his breakthrough moment he had extended his arm to grab Goku by his childish leg and pull him in for a crushing blow. Goku instead used the opportunity to pull out the red staff he held on his back and point it at Piccolo's face.

"Power Pole, extend!" Goku yelled out as the staff's other end dug into Piccolo's jaw, exceeding the length even of his own extended limb and stumbling him momentarily. The young Saiyan was too fierce and bloodthirsty to let this opportunity slip, he was close enough for a combination of strikes so he let King Piccolo have it, concluding it with a devastating kick straight to the front of Piccolo's face.

"Ka…! Me…!" Goku cupped his hands by his side while floating above airborne King Piccolo, planning to crush the Demon King into the ground with a Kamehameha before Piccolo landed on his butt himself.

King Piccolo shot his eyes wide open, canceling his temporary daze to extend his hand forward and send Goku flying with a blast of Ki energy. Goku wrapped his arms around his knees and cannonballed himself back and onto his feet. The Saiyan dragged his wristbands across his face to check for blood but found nothing, after the momentary check-up on the damage suffered, the boy once again prepared for another round of his settlement of matters with the Demon King.

"Damn Saiyans…" King Piccolo manipulated himself via levitation to end up back on his feet as well, having used his flight to halt his fall in order to blast back at Goku earlier. "One moment I've no idea who the hell you are, the other you're all over my plans!"

"Why did you have your goons kill Krillin!?" Goku roared out from his position, his demand for answers made him recall every ounce of the rage he felt at that moment, it bolstered his toughness and made red pulses of blood close in on his vision. If this continued, all he'd see would be red but, somehow, Goku had never felt more powerful than right now.

"Krillin? You mean that baldy? He was in the World Martial Arts Tournament, I reckon. All of the martial artists must be exterminated in order for my world domination to be successful. That was the plan, anyway…" King Piccolo replied with a callous smirk.

"So he didn't do anything to you?" Goku clenched his fists together and closed his eyes to compose himself, he liked the surge of power and the feeling of invincibility that he had when mad but the fury was beginning to seem like too much at one point. "You had him killed just because he's strong, is that it!?"

"Hmph… He's not just strong, he's a martial artist. I've underestimated your kind before and paid the price. A martial artist scumbag sealed me into a rice-cooker, just like I've done to that Great Ape. It must be hurting, not being able to enter your true form, knowing that I'll seal you up right away?" Piccolo tilted his head to the side as if mocking Goku and calling him out.

"What are you talking about?" Goku shook his head. "Don't try to steer me away from the fact you ordered Krillin's death!"

Piccolo raised a curious eyebrow, wondering if this boy was some kind of a dumbass or if he simply misread the exact power of a Saiyan. He had thought that Saiyans were all Great Apes naturally that had taken the appearance that most resembled the locals of the place they've inhabited, which was why both that girl earlier and Son Goku looked so much like humans if it wasn't for their tails. Now he was beginning to wonder about that, though this boy was far too focused on one thing to be of any indication about the Saiyan abilities.

The eyes of King Piccolo gleamed crimson, two miniature stars of scarlet lit up and Goku felt a tight, psychokinetic grip around every fiber of his being locking him in place. He tried to talk, he tried to struggle but it was of no use. Just like against Chiaotzu he felt completely frozen in place. The pressure that the Demon King put against his body was different to Chiaotzu's, Piccolo was far more powerful and therefore his psychokinesis didn't just hold Goku in place, it crushed and tried to reduce him to a singularity the size of a dot.

"Th… That's dirty…" Goku hissed with the first chance of speech he fought through to. "Using… Chiaotzu's technique…"

King Piccolo dashed up right to Goku as if he owned the boy now and delivered a tyrannical kick to the boy's body. Goku belched as he had little air to wheeze out in the moment of impact and he felt King Piccolo's boot almost digging its way to his spine with that kick. King Piccolo dashed up to Goku once more while the boy was airborne and chopped his arm at Goku's abdomen again as if attempting to cut the Saiyan into two. The hard hit into the white floor of infinite void made Goku cry out in pain as he felt everything around him go blank for a millisecond. That was, however, more than enough for the Demon King as Goku recovered just in time to witness King Piccolo descending from high above with his knee crushing Goku further into the ground but the floor didn't budge like any normal surface would have. The Room of Space and Time seemed invincible in all of its dimensions but Goku's body was anything but.

"Come on, transform then…" King Piccolo taunted the boy, watching him writhing and grunting in agony. "Become your true form – a Great Ape so I can seal you up alongside your sister, girlfriend or whatever… My sons will have no equal to threaten their reign!"

"I… I've no idea what… You're talking about…" Goku grunted while wiping the blood off of his face, one of his eyes was beginning to swell up, the lid of his half-closed gazer obstructed the view from his right somewhat. "Stop trying to deflect that you've murdered Krillin!"

"Of course I've had him killed, hell, I'll kill your friend myself if he manages to survive Drum after I kill you!" King Piccolo yelled out at Goku, feeling sick of the boy's defiance of his best effort to push him to transform. Unlike with that girl, knowing that this boy held such a frightening transformation in hand and knowing exactly how to deal with it, King Piccolo spared no ounce of his strength to push him to transform at last.

"Stop saying that! Stop it!" Goku roared out, his eyes went blank as his Ki surged in all directions, even forcing the Demon King on his back foot and covering up in order to stay standing. Just when King Piccolo moved his hand away from obstructing his view, Goku's fist dug its way into his own belly, sending the ancient Evil Tribe overlord belching and crouching up as salad goop dripped from his mouth.

The young Saiyan placed his arms to his side and began vibrating ever so subtly, images of Son Goku jumped out from the main embodiment of Piccolo's fury and confusion but those Afterimages soon faded away, only the main Son Goku charged right at the baffled Demon King. King Piccolo threw a devastating cross at the boy's face, confused that Goku would still test the range and reach of their limbs but the Goku he hit was just an Afterimage.

Goku blurred in from behind the Demon King and crashed an overhead kick into King Piccolo's behind, sending the Evil Tribe ruler on his knees and elbows. King Piccolo bellowed in pain when Goku's feet began a literal downpour of stomps at him back, powerful enough to propel his foot back up and cock it back for another go just as the other pair finished its cycle. King Piccolo jumped to his feet, throwing his arms up and expelling an explosive wave of Ki to blast the damned child away from him but Goku's image just faded away again as if it was never there.

Like a speeding arrow, the boy hurled at Piccolo from far away, aiming for King Piccolo's gut which Goku had worked on so fine previously but this time the Demon King thought he had begun to figure out this step-up in Afterimage. He threw his knee up, right at Goku's chin but the knee went through thin air and a double ax handle strike to the top of King Piccolo's head made the decrepit demon feel like his head had split into two.

The Demon King stuck out his tongue, gasping for air when Goku's legs wrapped around his throat and the monkey boy began raining down hammer strikes at his face from up above before pushing himself off of King Piccolo's face and delivering a wrecking kick to King Piccolo's face which sent the demon spinning on his feet. The Saiyan didn't appear to be finished just yet, as he charged right back at his stumbling opponent when King Piccolo's arm elongated and bent over his head, twisting onto behind him and reaching out to grab Goku by his abdomen but going right through the boy and then snapping back into place while Demon King Piccolo turned back to face Goku with a busted open face, covered in purple streaks.

"Y-You brat!" Demon King Piccolo bore his fangs at Goku who stood a fair distance away, almost as if he had never attacked his enemy and let his Afterimages do the work. That wasn't so, the demon knew it, he felt those hits, he felt the emotion, the resonance behind them. Those fists had heart and feeling to them that King Piccolo just had to respect at least a little bit, even if the reason behind those emotions made him sick. "What was that you just did?"

"It's called an Afterimage Strike," Goku said, overflowing with a different kind of fury altogether from a moment ago as if pounding the Demon King a couple of times helped him let some steam off. "It's an improvement over the old Afterimage Technique but it won't work unless you can sense Ki really good and are skilled with the Afterimage itself."

"I see… So I wasn't just daydreaming and having a nasty nightmare…" the Demon King chuckled to himself, still feeling quite chipper and prepared to finish his battle. "Interesting, you know, the wisdom of Kami is now within me after I've used the Dragon Balls to fuse with him. Now that I reach out to it, I begin to understand your technique a little bit better. Yes… The seeing without eyesight, sensing the disturbance in your opponent's Ki instead of having to see how and when you're being attacked, the effortless replacement with an Afterimage and the rapid movement to correct your attack accordingly. Scary stuff…"

"I've had plenty of time in this room to train and plenty of motivation to knock you flat!" Goku entered his fighting stance with a serious look on his face.

"You? Knock me, the Great Demon King Piccolo flat!?" King Piccolo laughed out. "Even right now, you just landed a few lucky shots. With just an ounce of my limitless battle power, I can make you dance before me, like an obedient little human wannabe that you are!"

"You talk a lot," Goku replied without skipping a beat. "Now I see why you have that winged creep kill Krillin, it's because you can't kill someone as strong as him by just talking."

"Why you…" King Piccolo clenched his fists until a little blood squirted out of them when his grey nails dug into the flesh of his own hands. The Demon King crossed his arms over his head and then moved them aside, sending concentrated Ki beams from his eyes right at Goku. The Saiyan hopped back, avoiding the eye lasers and racing around them to attack King Piccolo head-on. As the Demon King turned his head to track the boy's movements, Goku blinked away from his vision and then appeared from the left – the opposite side, digging his elbow into King Piccolo's cheek so hard it nearly snapped the Demon King's neck.

Another eye laser hit Goku square in the chest and sent him flying back with black smoke rising from the charred hole in his Turtle School uniform. Not to be the one to be brought down this easy, Goku rolled back and landed on his feet, ready to engage the enemy again but another eye laser hit him right in the forehead as the Great Demon King Piccolo had predicted Goku showing off his tenacity and fortitude and hopping back on his feet right after being brought down.

"Now do you see the great difference between our strength?" King Piccolo spread his arms out to embrace the feeling of victory brimming in his chest. "Although I must admit, Saiyan, I was prepared to be done in by you, to be driven to the point of death so that my plans could have been realized…"

"Wh… What do you mean?" Goku wiped his forehead of traces of blood with his slightly burnt wristband while sitting up and then returning to his fighting stance.

"Nothing soft weaklings like you need to be worried about. You know… That girl was really hesitant to transform into her Great Ape form too, she waited until I beat her to the very inch of her life, to be certain, I had almost thought I'd killed her when I tossed her lifeless body into that ditch. Maybe you Saiyans can't fully control the transformation? No sensible creature would resist a power so mighty that it could drive even me, the Great Demon King Piccolo to a corner so adamantly." King Piccolo pondered.

"I already told you, I don't know what you're talking about!" Goku yelled out. "Don't talk like you've beaten me already. I'm not giving up yet!"

"That's what you all say…" King Piccolo smirked. "Even though your resistance is a tad more valiant than that girl's, you're still no match for me, it's time I beat that cruel reality into your face."

"Don't gloat about hurting my friends!" Goku yelled out while charging at the Demon King head-on. Another streak of red eye lasers parted the white void of the Room of Space and Time but Goku rolled aside to dodge them, then raced around to the blind-spot that King Piccolo's eyes couldn't reach and kicked at the side of King Piccolo's knees, forcing the Great Demon King to bark in pain and collapse to one knee.

Piccolo's hand went in to grab Goku's head and halt the Saiyan from getting overzealous with his attack. Using his unharmed foot for a dash, Piccolo drove Goku's head into the floor and went as far as his one good foot could carry him before lifting him over his head and driving an adamant fist into Goku's belly, forcing cries of pain and blood out of the boy's mouth and all over King Piccolo's hand that held it.

"You're embarrassing yourself…" King Piccolo smiled and threw Goku as high up as he could before firing another eye laser at him high up in the air. The Demon King wondered if he had connected with the boy as he could hardly tell with the seemingly infinite vastness of the dimension he engaged the last frontier of human resistance in but the boy's desperate cries of pain that reached his sensitive even in his old age, pointy ears rung like pleasant music.

Goku's body hit the floor with a resonant thud but the ridden with bruises and burns arms pushed the boy's body back up. Even if he stumbled a bit in his stance, Goku was back up and beaming his angry eyes back at the Demon King.

"Die already!" King Piccolo grunted in frustration as he sent another streak of eye lasers at Goku, looking to cook the boy good and proper before reducing him to a mere corpse. The boy pulled out his elongating pole and drove it into the ground, using it to propel himself over the eye beams and then slamming it into King Piccolo's head, using more and more of his brutish strength to force Piccolo's head to the ground and the Demon flat on his belly.

Gooey warmth woke King Piccolo up from his stumble as he peeled his busted face up off the ground, seeing the accumulating puddle of purple goop underneath him with blurry vision as more of his blood streaked over his eyes when he tilted his head up – he, the Great Demon King Piccolo was injured in a meaningful way! Not only was this boy resisting more than his female counterpart, he actually had the strength to injure him! It was just fortunate that it was the girl and not him that couldn't have been killed as this boy was a far graver threat to his rule.

With a flying side kick, Goku sent King Piccolo flying and down on his back. The blurry vision and the constant bleeding made it too difficult for the Demon King to respond or defend himself at the moment of impact. Evil Ki surged in the Demon King's arm like lightning before he sent it slicing up the void in a slashing projectile that hit the rushing boy right in the chest and sent him flying back on his bottom, once again, crying in pain and smoking but once again rising and insisting on fighting with graver and graver injuries each time he was taken down.

Even if he was having an advantage in this fight, as he clutched the several cracks on his forehead and the top of his head, the Demon King realized that he might have ruled out this boy as his potential slayer far too soon. It looked as if this Saiyan and not the king of the Evil Tribe himself was the real mad demon of battle. Son Goku fought like a demon too, growling, punching and kicking without thinking, functioning on pure rage…

In the most painful moment of his emerging and accumulating injuries shrouding his thoughts, King Piccolo regretted just for a blink that he had this boy's friend killed. It was beginning to seem that this alone and not the noble desire to protect his world was what brought the decrepit demon into conflict with this immovable object that was the Saiyan will to fight.


	73. To the Edge of One's Limits and Beyond!

Drum took his shot at Krillin, itching to see just how much of his great power the bald human had lost after toying with his enemy using all of his potential at once. It might have been obvious now and not before but Krillin had misjudged the vitality of an Evil Tribe demon and their demonic physiology, their aggression to take charge at a possibly stronger opponent just so they could see more blood being shed on the battlefield.

Drum's fist almost covered the entirety of Krillin's body. Everything went black for a moment when the human martial artist got smashed with the wrecking ball of the thick and powerful enemy. With a shake of his head, snapping himself out of his daze and returning to the gritty reality of matching fists against a fat demon, Krillin prepared to fight back against his sadistic opponent.

Krillin's eyes tracked every motion, his limbs moved in to block in time still. Having lost a meaningful portion of his stamina did little for diminishing his skill. The reaction time might have dipped but other than that Krillin was golden. He was strong enough, there was no reason to be afraid! He was no longer the frightened boy observing people much more excited about martial arts fighting out on the tournament stage while he admired their results and secretly dreamed about achieving the same ones with only one-tenth of the hard work.

This time he did all the work, he persevered and fought alongside Goku and reaped the rewards. Just as Goku was patient to accept losses where they came and choose to improve himself in preparation of when they come for him again, Krillin was patient in withstanding the bitterness of hard work and that was why he was now laying fists on the mushy flesh of King Piccolo's strongest son yet. Looking overwhelmed by Krillin's returned offensive, Drum roared out and sent waves of purple electricity streaming around him as an intense aura.

It hurt! Though the hurt was just like the infernal scorches of the Room of Spirit and Time. It was just heat. Nothing but heat. Krillin had learned to deal with that already, he learned to calm his breathing, soothe his mind and embrace serenity in all of his essence. That tranquility made his aura as chill as he was, it made it cold and heat suddenly didn't seem so bad…

Krillin rose from his knees and straightened out his back, opening his eyes and facing Drum like an opponent worthy to stand against his enemy. He wasn't counting on a trick, he wasn't even planning on being deceitful. This time he'll settle it like a true martial artist. The kind that would make Muten Roshi proud if he could see him.

Drum wriggled like a wet dog, he shoved his thumb that was the size of a human arm all by itself into his mouth and blew vigorously, inflating his body and forcing the caved inward bumps of flesh to cave out, rendering Drum somewhat less misshapen and battered in appearance.

"Well, well… The shrimpy human still has some fight left in him after all…" Drum cracked his knuckles. Krillin took a quick glance downward, smelling smoke. It wasn't his flesh, being roasted by Drum's intense evil lightning technique but instead his uniform displaying its holes.

For once it was a good sign – Krillin himself hadn't yet suffered terrible injuries that might have prevented him from fighting, on the other hand, it also meant that his Ki defenses were slipping up if his uniform was taking damage. It was just the first stage of his Ki failing to keep up with the exact coolness or the power of the boy's demands but it was an indication to be heeded – he needed to settle things soon.

"I'm a demon, you know…" Drum declared out of the blue.

"Yeah, I know… I have made the mistake of believing I'd be fighting someone like I've faced before. I didn't realize how ignorant to the pain you lot are, how tough your physiology is. You guys might be more effective and ruthless fighting machines than the Saiyans…" Krillin wiped an itching bruise on the edge of his lip with his damaged wristband.

"That's not it, I'm a demon. My power is meant to cause terror and agony. My lightning is to roast and decimate, make hearts of puny humans burst and pop out through their eyes when I zap them." Drum elaborated, gesturing with his hands as if he pleaded Krillin to understand.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Krillin shook his head. "I too am tougher than I look."

"You still don't get it, do ya?" Drum pounded his open palm with his right fist as he made his fishy lips wave and pout in frustration. "The Great Demon King Piccolo gave birth to me after becoming one with Kami, I, therefore, have both demonic power and divine aid within my system and it's real damned confusing."

The swamp-green fatso extended his massive hands outward, threatening to zap Krillin again as his hands became submerged in an intense aura of purple lightning. Instead of blasting off at Krillin, the lightning resonated backward and took dominion over Drum's entire colossal frame. Krillin took a fighting stance and darted off with a flying kick to Drum's belly, the demon of round proportions nearly had his own eyes pop out from his sockets as he flew back bent over in pain.

"Do you think I haven't heard Demon King Piccolo explain you've healed him? I know that you're able to heal yourself too and I'm not letting that happen." Krillin declared while he loomed over the writhing and kneeling demon despite barely being one-third Drum's size and likely not even one-tenth his body weight.

"Th-Thank you…" Drum exclaimed through physical torment not even a demon of the Evil Tribe such as himself could have neglected. "I… I really hate using my lightning for that… Except on the Great Demon King… Piccolo… Thanks for... Helping me stay a demon of the... Evil Tribe..."

"Sure…" Krillin nodded his head in understanding before taking a bountiful leap back and propelling himself back at Drum, digging his foot deep into the demon's face and sending him rolling aside. Krillin then bounced back and to the east, taking another flying kick from his faraway location at the enemy, then repeating it two or three more times until Drum laid sprawled out on the ground. This flying kick was the only thing of value in terms of martial arts techniques that Krillin had learned in the Orin Temple.

Of philosophy and life, he had learned to be afraid. He had learned that those with more power than him would always be out to get him, to bully him and that it was meaningless to try and resist. That he had to find his own ways to get back at the bullies, take shortcuts because in their own words he couldn't stand up to them not even in a thousand years… Drum had been a bully his entire short life and yet it took Krillin mere hours by the standards of the outside dimension to measure up to him. All it took was the first step and then to follow down that road as far as it led Krillin, then to shut up and keep walking a hundred more miles because that was how much more he was capable of when his body demanded to fall over already.

It remained unclear if Drum still fostered fighting spirit or if he had died already and moved solely out of the pure evil instinct to carve out people's eyes with those sharp claws of his, but the slob flashed behind Krillin with the remarkable instantaneous movement ability that he used to get around in battle. Krillin felt a dull and sharp thud at the back of his head and leaned forward, reeling in pain.

"Kamehameha!" Krillin yelled out after cupping his hands together and pointing them at the direction of the Drum who didn't appear to even be alive while fighting back. Then again, with how misshapen and swollen the demon's entire body was, it was rough to say… A beam of azure light, far punier than any of the ones Krillin had generated before taking off from the pint-sized martial artist's hands, Drum leaned forward, letting the beam enter through the gaping hole in his head and then move right down his gullet, gobbling the technique up just like earlier.

"Orin Kick!" Krillin chanted out after propelling himself at Drum and driving his flying kick straight at Drum's belly where the entirety of the swallowed Kamehameha lingered. The force of impact made Drum burst from inside and detonate in a titanic explosion that sent Krillin flying aside like a ragdoll and made things seem dizzy and black all around. By the time Krillin had mustered up the willpower to stand up, he realized that he could barely fathom where exactly he was in the Room of Spirit and Time.

There was this one black pile of ash further ahead, Krillin noted to start his path back to Goku's aid from there…

* * *

"I will admit, you've pushed me the farthest that anyone has ever pushed the Great Demon King Piccolo in the prime of his power. Still, you lack the power to stand up to the Evil Tribe parading around in your human form." The Demon King declared, further mocking Goku for his hesitance to transform.

"You're right. I might need a bit of a leg-up…" Goku chuckled to himself, only managing to must out a puny smirk while his right eye swelled up in a mean-looking bump and threatened to close for good until properly treated. With his somewhat hopeless smile giving way to stern determination, the boy pressed his hands to his sides and made his Ki burst outward in valiant aura flowing vastly beyond Goku's body.

"Wh-What are you doing!?" King Piccolo dropped his jaw. "You're bleeding out power forcing your Ki out like that!"

The color of Goku's aura began to sparkle, the air around him appeared to bend and ripple before a more focused inspection revealed trails of vapor rising from the raging body of the young martial artist. The hair on his tail stood up and began trying to vent the immense heat that Goku had begun building up in his body by forcefully manipulating his Ki to cook him from within, similarly to how Goku adapted to the inhumane frost of the Room of Spirit and Time. Goku's entire skin took a healthy hue of red, as if he had just left the most intense sauna of his life while sweat he was letting out profusely continued to evaporate in crystal-clear vapor above Goku's body.

Taken aback by the suicidal power-up of his opponent, the Demon King took a step back with his left leg. So far, he wasn't even sure that Goku was powering up at all, his power seemed the same from an outsider's perspective but he had just forced his body to the state of dehydration and near-heatstroke through just his Ki manipulation alone.

A pulse of flames burst from where Goku stood but the boy was no longer there, in fact, the flames were just signals for his movement. Emanating heat from his entire being and further overflowing with superheated Ki, like a star contained inside a human body, Goku appeared right in front of King Piccolo's body and threw a wicked cross to the Demon King's jaw, bending the decrepit belfry of his opponent entirely to the will of his fist.

King Piccolo stumbled back and wriggled, struggling to remain upright in order to not appear weak in front of his opponent who had just taken a breath of his second wind and catching the rush of that wave decided to not let go. Goku let it rain with his punches, all over his enemy who failed to keep up with the relentless barrage of strikes and resolved merely to defend himself. The Demon King yelled out, sending an explosive shockwave of chakra that threw Goku back and the Saiyan clutched at his chest before forcing to keep going. There was a sense of urgency to Goku's attacks that there was not before and the Demon King, now possessing some of Kami's wisdom, identified that.

The two clashed in the center, the Demon King felt curious to see where his hated enemy, the champion of humanity and martial artists alike has taken his loathsome craft. He pressed his hands and let his own Ki loose, holding not a single ounce of his power back. The blazing inferno emanating from Goku's aura merged together with the Demon King's own unfathomable might and created a cataclysm to shake up the entire visible area of the Room of Space and Time while the two struggled like two goats in the middle of a bridge.

"Submit!" King Piccolo declared proudly while pressing Goku a bit too hard. Feeling the joints in his arms giving way and fearing they'd promptly break, Goku folded and Piccolo pushed his enemy off-balance before pulling him into a knee shooting straight at Goku's face. Red poured as if Goku's strained body was waiting its entire lifetime to let it loose. It was as if whatever power Goku had called forth by causing himself to dehydrate rapidly had made him brittle at the same time as it supercharged the rest of his bodily attributes.

Crying out in pain Goku slumped in King Piccolo's grasp. For a moment the sudden power over his enemy began getting to the Demon King's head and made him freeze but that spark was all that was needed to reignite Son Goku's flame who forced a nova of Ki out from his body and even sent the Demon King reeling away from the boy's flames.

"You're doubling down on this, huh?" the Demon King wondered as Goku continued to threaten to kill himself by burning up every ounce of humidity inside his body just to gain a temporary boost in performance.

Not having even a moment of time to humor his opponent with a reply, Goku charged at his enemy who had left himself wide open as he scurried away from the power of the blaze. The boy landed onto the floor and disappeared, blinking right up to the Demon King only to thrust his fist and half of his arm into the Demon King's gut, forcing both the eyes and the teeth of the fossil to slide forward and threaten to come out from its sockets.

"I-Incredible… You've… You've gotten even more powerful, it's not just a mere skip higher on the power scale, it's a continuous soar…" the agonized Demon King pronounced while wiping the trails of blood off of his face and giving Goku a scornful look. While the forced rise in the boy's body temperature and the physical strain of expelling so much Ki out all at once drove his body closer and closer to collapse, at the same time, it pushed his body beyond its limits by simulating a crisis. "What a dirty trick… So befitting a martial artist…"

Goku didn't speak, who knew if the boy's mouth even had the necessary humidity to utter one word or if it felt like made of sand as the heavy breathing that the boy's panting let out rung true to his actual condition. Goku rotated like a whirligig, throwing every limb he had at the Demon King all at once as he rushed to victory. Despite the tremendous strain, the tension was never higher in the boy's body and he was ready to do his enemy in or die trying.

An uppercut to the Demon King's chin, a haymaker to send the murky slug-man flying, Goku disappeared in a haze of flames and appeared out of seemingly thin air to kick his airborne opponent smashing into the ground, squirming in pain from the royal beatdown that the boy was putting on him. The sight of drooling purple from the open jaw of the Great Demon King that colored the demon's fangs with the hue of his own blood made it apparent that Goku had caught up with his opponent in terms of battlefield success and threatened to overtake him in a dehydration-induced flash.

Goku clutched his fist by his side and grit his teeth, his childish muscles tensed up at the same time and twitched a pair of times involuntarily while the young Saiyan demanded that his body would withstand the tremendous punishment he was putting it through and carry him to the end of the golden road he set himself up. The chance for hope and victory that he had forged for himself and the final hope for the world that took him in and raised him when his own had abandoned him to be free once again.

Goku set his blazing fist aside and dispersed in a mass of flames, blinking back into existence only high-up in where the clouds would have settled had the dimension of the Room of Space and Time any clouds to do the settling. From that point on, gravity would have done most of the work. The infernal heat that Goku made burst from his body, his entire aura focused into his right fist as the Saiyan took a plunge at his panting and possibly knocked out cold opponent. A streak of white flashed…

Piccolo's eyes were open – his finger was pointing at Goku and the boy's arm, carrying the hopes and wishes of humanity that he decided to place upon his shoulders and deliver to King Piccolo himself burst open in a bloody mess as Piccolo's finger beam penetrated Goku's arm by the elbow. The pent up flames dispersed into thin air, just as they've manifested.

"You'll pay for every ounce of hurt you've put me through with that trick of yours!" the Demon King barked out with bloody glee as he pointed his finger at Goku's other arm.

Just like before, Goku cried out in pain significantly later than the jarring hole had appeared in the center of his arm, very nearly taking the limb off in its entirety, had it not been for a couple of strings of muscle insisting to hold it together. The arms of the plummeting Saiyan limped lifelessly by his sides as Goku parted the white void with a hopeless expression.

"My power… It's gone nowhere!" Goku yelled out as black circles formed around his eyes, a sign of the tremendous blood loss from the total of the wounds accumulated in this battle as well as the gruesome finale that he was about to meet in King Piccolo's hands.

"Too bad you've got no arms to punch me with anymore… All dried out from fluids to pull that dehydration trick again, disarmed and defenseless. You're about to get gone, kid!" King Piccolo raised his hand up, ready to deliver his Explosive Demon Wave as he placed his left hand over the wrist of his right and channeled all of his Ki to flare and build up. If he timed it right, the mightiest blast the Demon King could do would come out just before this Saiyan boy hits the ground and incinerates him point-blank.

"Ka…!" Goku yelled out. "Me…!"

"It's useless, I've seen that girl use that technique before. You might have the Ki but you don't have the arms to use it, just curl up and die, trash!" King Piccolo taunted his falling opponent as a vein popped on the side of his face while his malicious Ki erupted from his body in a storm of wild lightning beaming off in all directions.

"Ha…! Me…!" Goku closed his eyes and continued to cry out. His face soured from both pain and the tremendous Ki that he had put into the fist that would have demolished King Piccolo but which he had to store into his body after his arm very nearly came off. "Ha!"

The beam of superheated white left from the tips of Goku's feet, accelerating the boy's descent and sending him crashing down like an arrow through the gut of the Demon King Piccolo, reducing the arm that would have launched the Explosive Demon Wave to a shredded stump, while the stumped King Piccolo could do nothing more but twitch his eye and drop his mouth at shock of his right arm being entirely gone and a hole the size of a teenager Saiyan gaping in his abdomen. Goku crash-landed behind the Demon King and laid lifeless as he had taken a nasty bump on his head and skid for at least half a kilometer further from his agony-ridden opponent.

Krillin shook in disbelief, having found his way back only to witness these final moments of the battle for Earth's fate. Demon King Piccolo was as good as dead! The Earth was free, at last!


	74. The King is Dead, Long Live the King

"Goku!" Krillin called out to his friend. The downed boy spread a pungent odor of sweat all around the area and his skin looked red enough to seem as if he had just left an intense sauna session. Krillin knew what that meant, Goku used his odd power-up mode that drove his body into a dehydration crisis to temporarily boost his strength and speed beyond the normal limits. It was a dangerous technique, the longer Goku used it, the more powerful he'd have grown but the closer his body drove itself to total shutdown or even death. The concept was too early in its testing stages for the technique to even have a name, it was just the way in which the duo kept themselves warm using Ki escalated to the N'th degree.

A puny spark of life still simmered in Goku, it was weak but it wasn't going any weaker so it didn't seem like the boy's life was in much danger. He could have used a good dip in a cold bath and some food to help him recover, ideally a Senzu. It wasn't like there was much point staying in the Room of Spirit and Time now that King Piccolo didn't threaten the world anymore. King Piccolo…

The decrepit Demon Lord coughed up more purple goop from his mouth and glanced at the massive hole jarring in his abdomen, then at the stump of the arm that he had planned to fire off his Explosive Demon Wave with before Goku shred it to fleshy bits and reduced it to ashy remains on the floor. The Demon King coughed up and smiled. It was a malicious sort of smile that drove goosebumps down Krillin's back. He had to lash out or else fear would consume him again. Krillin had promised he'd stop being afraid for once.

"What's so funny!? Goku won, we'll bust Chayote out of the rice-cooker too, you've lost!" Krillin shook his fist at King Piccolo but didn't dare come any closer.

"Won? Hardly so…" the Demon King wheezed in a husky voice. Who could have blamed him, after all, most of his chest cavity was blown out. "It seems impossible to think that I… The Great Demon King Piccolo would be done in… By some… Boy… Although… I had been waiting for this body to feel close to death."

"Wait, what!?" Krillin freaked out. "This body?"

"That's right…" The Demon King pointed his beady eyes at Krillin and got serious while violent jerks took his body over. It didn't make much sense that another egg would form inside his body and fire off into the white oblivion beyond but it did so nevertheless. An egg almost the size of the Demon King's head emerged from his mouth and shot out deep into the Room of Spirit and Time. The dying Demon King slobbered and bled all over in slouching position.

"What was that!?" Krillin demanded to know.

"That…? That was your doom…" the Demon King mustered out a laugh. "Listen and listen well, human, when driven to a point of near-death, the Evil Tribe is capable of reincarnating into a new body. This reincarnation is… Both me and not me at the same time… Part clone, part my true son… All inheritor of the Evil Tribe's might and will. You think you have won by killing me but… Truth be told… It was I, Demon King Piccolo who… Tasted victory by transferring my power into a younger inheritor and cemented Kami becoming one with me at last."

A powerful blast detonated at the Demon King's side, blowing a chunk of him off and ripping what pathetic husk remained almost in half. A cascade of more and more smaller blasts then collided into a singular, almighty explosion that made Krillin cover up so that he didn't get thrown aside. After the smoke settled, the Great Demon King Piccolo was no more.

With a hastened step, Krillin rushed up to the rice-cooker and opened it, a vortex of green light emerged from within, forcing the bald martial artist to stumble a few steps back in resistance to the emerging force that began taking a monstrous shape. A shockwave-inducing roar emanated through the Room of Spirit and Time making Krillin go pale in terror. What emerged from within the rice-cooker was a Great Ape monster similar to that which had appeared in the World Martial Arts Tournament three years ago. Back then Muten Roshi had to blow up the moon because there was no other way to fight the monster off. Now, even when the titan of fur, teeth, and muscle bled from its eyes, nose, and mouth and looked in an all-around pathetic condition, it still sent surges of Ki so massive that they might have made Krillin's bowel movements freeze up.

It would be such a shameful death, dying to a careless release of Great Ape Chayote just after slaying the Great Demon King!

The Great Ape jerked and clutched its stomach, then bellowed once more as it began shrinking in size. Its hair began retracting while the beast bled out mass and bulk until it remained as a shape of a battered and bruised young woman lying on the white floor of the Room and Spirit and Time unconscious. Krillin wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked around.

"That's right… This place doesn't have a moon, does it?" he muttered to himself. "Blowing up a moon serves the same point as not having one, to begin with, I guess…" he laughed out despite being the only one who could hear his own glee.

The handle of the wooden door leading into the Room of Spirit and Time turned and the old door squeaked open. Mr. Popo stared at Krillin and the excitement on his face for a few moments before realizing what this attitude of the martial artist must have meant.

"I left Goku in a cold bath. He'll need a couple of moments to soak up some fluids. Also, Chayote's in there too, I umm…" Krillin poked two of his fingers together with a blush on his cheeks. "I didn't feel like moving her. They both will need some help."

"That's a relief…" Mr. Popo smiled. "Earth will be safe soon then."

"Will be?" Krillin wondered.

"Yes. King Piccolo left a nasty mark of the Devil carved on the remains of West City. The mark inspired the deep-rooted evil from the human hearts to surface. The world will need some time to recover. Never has the Earth needed a new Kami more than now." Mr. Popo looked down, staring the upcoming difficulties of picking the pieces back up in the face.

A couple of hours later, Korin and Yajirobe ascended to the God's Temple with a sack of Senzu. It was an unusual situation to see the old cat up in God's Temple but it was also a very unusual set of circumstances. Goku took a good twenty-two minutes to get back into shape and regain his consciousness. Both of the Saiyans stuffed their faces full in the Room of Spirit and Time. They looked weak at first but with each bite of food, their strength surged back into their bodies. The Senzu helped to top the process off.

"Nice!" Chayote punched her palm, feeling the rough thud of her fists. "With this strength, King Piccolo would have been a joke…"

"Yeah… I feel power surgin' through my body! It's insane!" Goku shrieked in shock after chewing the Senzu. "Who's this guy again?" he pointed at Yajirobe.

"He's my newest trainee. He's can be pretty useful at times…" Korin explained.

"What's dat about useful, eh? You just sat on my shoulders while I did the climbin' 'ere, ya coot!" Yajirobe shook his fist at Korin.

"It's not like you couldn't use losing some weight…" Korin cleared his throat while fending off the accusation.

"I'm glad you two feel stronger." Krillin pulled his torn up gi, choosing the grab the bull that blew smoke from its nostrils just outside the pawnshop by the horns. "Because we might soon use that strength…"

"Huh?" Goku wondered and turned to Krillin, the rest followed, curious about what the baldy had to say.

"King Piccolo he… Just before he died, he spat out another egg. He talked a lot about some reincarnation business too…" Krillin pointed out.

"Oh no!" Mr. Popo took a step back and raised his palms up in panic. "You mean he succeeded in reincarnating!?"

"I… I think he did…" Krillin dragged his shoe across the floor. "I didn't know I was meant to stop him, it just happened so suddenly. By the time he explained what had happened – it had already happened. The egg flew off far in the Room of Space and Time somewhere…"

"Oh… That's better. If the little demonling gets lost – he won't hurt Earth anymore." Mr. Popo scratched his cheek. "Still… It's sad. That means there's no more hope for Kami to come back, not even if we use the Dragon Balls."

"It isn't like we could, Kami's gone, isn't he?" Korin sighed. "Seeing Earth how it is now, for how long further can we postpone that we need a new guardian?"

"I know… I had thought that… Maybe there was hope that… Kami would still return but…" Mr. Popo got wet in the eyes as his lips started whimpering in waves. "Korin is right. The world is in chaos, Piccolo's reincarnation might emerge from the Room of Spirit and Time at any point and threaten the world again. The need for a young and strong guardian now is greater than ever. Kami is… Truly gone." Mr. Popo sniffed.

"Goku killed Demon King Piccolo, he'd likely whoop Piccolo Jr.'s ass too…" Krillin prod his friend in the side with his elbow.

"Huh? Me, doing all that boring stuff Mr. Popo did while we were training? Nah, take that!" Goku pulled his eyelid down with a crude gesture, scaring Mr. Popo and making Korin laugh aloud from the rudeness of the young Saiyan.

"True, perhaps Son Goku isn't the best option. Krillin then?" Korin looked to the baldy. "You're one of the best students I've ever had. I never had any doubts I'd be giving you the bell the moment you started taking your training seriously."

"I'm sorry but… I'll have to refuse. I… I want nothing to do with Piccolo Jr. anymore. That whole Evil Tribe business is way too scary for me…" Krillin rubbed his stomach that kept on swarming with butterflies.

"Well, they did kill you and have you roam the Earth restless in Limbo so… I suppose nobody can blame you." Korin licked his paw.

"I suppose… If I really had to, I'll fight…" Krillin shrugged, looking frightened to the soles of his boots by the prospect.

"No." Mr. Popo shook his head. "The Guardian of Earth needs to be pure of heart. I can sense wickedness in you. You had nasty thoughts looking at Chayote when she emerged from the pot, didn't you?" Mr. Popo looked at Krillin with that blank, inquisitive stare that could have meant nothing just as easily as it could have meant a million of things.

"Whaaaa!" Krillin stumbled back while Chayote turned to him with a twitching eyebrow. "I… It's just… Look, I can't fly Goku's yellow Kinto so it's clear that my heart isn't the purest!" he wisely shoved it all under that carpet and sealed the question of his candidacy shut.

Goku laughed, nearly rolling over on his back in hilarity as he pointed at Krillin's emotional predicament, having found it all quite comical, though more likely than not because he understood nothing about what anyone was talking about and reacted purely on the blood-red blush on Krillin's face and how he reacted to being embarrassed in public.

"Chayote's chances at stopping Piccolo Jr. are as good as they are going to get for us…" Krillin shrugged, avoiding eye contact with Chayote as much as possible.

"Her heart is far from pure…" Mr. Popo pointed out. "I would also like the new Guardian to have at least a modicum of mysticism training. That part takes the longest to tutor the Guardian in."

"Also, she's dumb and lazy as a brick." Korin licked his paw. "It wasn't until very recently that she's learned the basics of Ki manipulation. Think about how long it'd take a pitiful Kami like that to create anything at all. She hasn't even earned her bell yet…"

"Thanks for the flattery but… It's not like I planned on staying here to rule over this joint anyway." Chayote locked her arms over her chest and looked away. "I'm gonna go fly off into space anyway to join up with the Frieza Army like I was always meant to. King Piccolo really did a number on this planet, it's worthless to conquer anyway…"

Krillin smiled. The routine of Chayote's endless excuses for why she was sticking around and not acting on her basic Saiyan impulses had not yet gotten old with him. It didn't seem to have gotten old with Goku either who had finally managed to settle down after laughing at Krillin and was beginning to do some light stretching since the conversation of higher ranking divinities and attendants of Earth was beginning to bore him.

"Do ye even have any food 'ere!? Carryin' dat deadweight cat made me hungry!" Yajirobe croaked from somewhere far away in God's Temple. Korin and Mr. Popo didn't look all too excited to have the ronin hick scour the sacred grounds of God's Temple but the conversation and the tough decision ahead of them were too important to overlook.

"What about Fortuneteller Baba, isn't she really old and a strong mystic? She seems like the right kind of crone for the job…" Chayote shrugged, not even daring to suggest the woman's brother since he was a perv through and through and judging with what was being discussed – it was a wrong property for a Kami to have.

"No way!" Mr. Popo objected. "Baba is very old. The human lifetime is fragile and becoming a Kami extends it two or three times due to the influence of the God Ki but the woman has a notoriously bad reputation and she doesn't follow any rules at all – she'd doom us all. Not to mention that she's greedy and self-centered at heart."

"That she is…" Chayote sighed, identifying her mentor at heart by what Mr. Popo described.

"Upa…" Goku pointed out nonchalantly while stretching. "I'm not sure what we're talking about here but Krillin said he's not able to fly Kinto, Upa can fly the Kinto just fine."

"Upa… Baba's little trainee boy, right?" Korin scratched his chin. "Yes… That might work… Baba has been training him to become her assistant so that she didn't have to do any work. He'll be a natural!"

"Be right back!" Mr. Popo declared out of a sudden as he was standing atop of the magical flying carpet by the time Korin finished the sentence. A blur of black, gold and rose and Mr. Popo was back with a frightened young man on the carpet with crossed tomahawks on his back and even more details face-paint decorating the boy with his accomplishments.

"Ch…Chayote!" Upa smiled and jumped off of the carpet. "Goku!" he turned for the young boy as the two shook hands. "What's… What's going on here?" he scratched his head.

"Kami is dead. You will become the new Kami." Mr. Popo declared with a bluntness that could have only been attributed to someone unfamiliar with the subtleties of the human communication and basic social skills.

"Me!?" Upa reeled back in shock. "B-But…!" he tried to come up with at least one of the endless reasons there must have been for that to be impossible but he just couldn't formulate one. It might not have been because of the fact that there were no reasons but more likely that the entire situation seemed just so absolutely preposterous that he couldn't even begin to deal with it in a rational manner.

"Yes, you've done some training with Baba so you'll pick things up quickly. You're pure of heart so the other past Kami will accept you when you take your trials. You will do just fine." Mr. Popo nodded with a smile on his face. "Mr. Popo will be your humble attendant and help you settle into your role, Mr. Popo will guide you in all things!"

"B-But... This is so sudden… M-My dad…" Upa fumbled his way through words.

"The boy isn't wrong. He is quite green at the moment. His father has served very well as the protector of the Sacred Land of Korin, he might serve as a replacement until the boy comes of age." Korin scratched his ear.

"No!" Mr. Popo shut it down. "The human lifespan is very limiting. It will take years for even a natural to adapt and learn all the things, then years more until he passes the Kami trials and learns to make things work. Kami was perfect because somehow he could just do all the things but Upa will have to learn all those from scratch. Even if God Ki extends the human lifespan, his father would pass away too soon after learning everything and then I'd have another middle-age Kami to teach it all over again to, who'd then also pass away far too soon. Upa is perfect, he must be the one to do it!"

"Look at you, shrimp…" Chayote smirked. "Going from a little weakling crybaby to Kami is a pretty impressive leap."

"Th…Thanks…" Upa scratched his chin, struggling to believe what was going on but surrendering himself to the chaos and accepting the tough training ahead of him and the tremendous responsibility of fixing the Earth after the chaos that King Piccolo seeded, not to mention protecting it from the threat of Piccolo Jr. on top of that. "What about you?" Upa wondered. "The Earth would benefit from having you help us protect it."

"Forget it, I'm long overdue to get off this rock." Chayote pouted. "As much as I'd love to pound the shit out of Piccolo's son or whatever that thing to avenge the beatdown he gave me, it might take years for the bastard to grow some balls to attack us. He might never find the exit from that room at all…"

"Say, say… What are dese tough balls!?" Yajirobe emerged from God's Temple carrying an old, open, gold-incrusted, mahogany chest with gleaming orange orbs with black stars on them. "One thing they're not is food…" the chubby ronin declared with busted teeth as he without a doubt had tested that specific potential use for the balls thoroughly.

"Th… These are! Dragon Balls!" Krillin freaked out, staring at the seven artifacts that reflected sunlight about as well as the Dragon Balls he knew and loved.


	75. To Space and Beyond!

"The Ultimate Dragon Balls!" Mr. Popo gasped, clapping both of his hands across his cheeks as if he had just seen a ghost. "Where did you find those!?"

"Whoa, don't flip out on me or anythin'... I was just lookin' fer some food!" Yajirobe scratched his behind with a free hand while his right held the decorated treasure chest tightly. "All dat cat gives me is beans... Keepin' all de fish fer himself, what a cheapskate!"

"Excuse me but... Are those actual Dragon Balls!?" Krillin yelled out, looking like he felt to be either the only sane person in the temple or like he was the only mad one there. "I thought the Dragon Balls disappeared when Kami did, didn't Kami make those things!? Does this mean we can bring everyone back to life!?"

Krillin looked around with a rich smile on his face. Tears of joy squirted from the corners of his eyes but just in the shape of single droplets because something about this felt too good to be true. It was that overlooked factor that kept Chayote and Goku more serious than their bald friend. After all, if these Dragon Balls were always a factor, Mr. Popo would have long since suggested using them.

"Yes, they are actual, functional Dragon Balls. They were created by Kami-sama when he was still fused with King Piccolo, that is to say before they've split apart. These are the more powerful version of the Dragon Balls, in fact. When Kami-sama split, these Dragon Balls became inert and turned to stone, it is the only time they did so because they do not normally turn to stone ever." Mr. Popo explained, marveling the magical artifact with his eyes though with respectful fear directed toward the chest. "The only way you could have found it would be if you went through the forbidden sections of the temple..."

"Sounds like this lazy moron..." Korin scratched his cheek. "Sorry about that, Mr. Popo..."

"So we can use them to bring everyone back to life then?" Goku wondered, finally speaking for the first time after staring at these new Dragon Balls with a serious expression as if he could somehow tell they were a bad deal.

"Technically, yes..." Mr. Popo looked uncomfortable explaining it, must have been this pure heart thing that he had to maintain at all times that prevented him from lying for selfish reasons. "Though we shouldn't..."

"I can't believe it... It makes sense though, if they were created when Kami and King Piccolo were one and the same and went inert when they split, it only makes sense they'd become functional once Kami is now permanently a part of Piccolo Jr." Krillin stared at the sky gleeful like a child staring at an ice cream vendor.

"Wait... Somethin' ere don't ring much sense... You said Kami and Piccolo created these Dragon Balls together, as if in when dey was one. Den how come dese balls are "Ultimate"? Didn' Kami create the Dragon Balls?" Yajirobe scratched his head.

"These are the second set of Dragon Balls Kami-sama and Piccolo combined have created. The first one was too weak and barely worked, Kami-sama and Piccolo together feared that they'd use too much power and break the Earth with their magic the first time. This second pair was when they utilized everything they've learned after destroying the first inferior set, they're the "Ultimate" set. That's before Kami-sama and King Piccolo split and Kami made his final and greatest set of Dragon Balls." Mr. Popo explained.

"Wait, the fusion of Kami and Piccolo destroyed the first set of Dragon Balls? How does one even do that?" Chayote wondered as this was perhaps the only thing that didn't make much sense to her. Of course, someone capable of creating ultimate wishing artifacts would have made all sorts of different sets. If Chayote could have been capable of such magic, she'd have made some of them for training, hell, she'd have made another set of them just because she was bored...

"Destroy the balls when they are turned to stone." Mr. Popo answered. "Though you must not use the Ultimate Dragon Balls under any circumstances. Because the fusion of Kami-sama and King Piccolo cranked up the power of the Dragon Balls' power with this set, the costs of using them are simply too great as well."

Whatever said cost was, it sent shivers down Mr. Popo's spine and made the genie sweat profusely. Judging from the looks of it, he'd have loved to destroy these Ultimate Dragon Balls where they stood but it didn't seem like he had such power. After all, as he had clearly stated previously – the Dragon Balls could have only been destroyed once they turned to stone and, as he stated earlier, the Ultimate Dragon Balls do not become inert unless their creator is dead or split apart. Plus, if he just flung them away, the Ultimate Dragon Balls would merely be found and collected by someone unaware of their power and then he'd still have to deal with whatever cost these balls had.

"But... Can't we use them just once?" Krillin raised his hand up with two pinched fingers to show just how much usage he wanted out of the cursed artifacts. "Just to bring everyone back? We can't leave Muten Roshi, Bulma, Tenshinhan and Yamcha, Puar and Oolong, Chiaotzu and Launch all dead forever..."

"You don't understand, I would ask the Ultimate Dragon Balls to recreate Kami-sama if I could but their power is just too great. I'm sorry King Piccolo killed your friends but that is the fate of humans, they all die at one point or another." Mr. Popo objected.

"Plus, if we'd use the Ultimate Dragon Balls, we wouldn't use them just to bring everyone back." Chayote declared. "That way we'd end up using them over and over and over again... Clearly they're bad business so if we're using them – we're using them to re-activate our Dragon Balls."

"Didn't you hear what I've said!?" Mr. Popo ran out in the middle of the circle while Yajirobe picked his nose, still holding the controversial finding he had unearthed in his armpit. "We're not using them, never ever!"

"But... If we're going for that..." Krillin pondered. "Can't we just ask the Ultimate Eternal Dragon to revive Kami, as Mr. Popo said?"

"Doubt it, Kami isn't dead, is he? He's just a part of another being on a genetic level. Just like King Piccolo is. They're not dead nor are they alive. The only option for us would be to re-activate the Dragon Balls through the Ultimate Eternal Dragon's power." Chayote shook her head.

"If you use the Ultimate Dragon Balls, the Earth will be destroyed!" Mr. Popo yelled out. Everyone stopped speaking and even mumbling to themselves and turned to Mr. Popo who breathed heavily after finally explaining the stakes.

"Wait, what? That's... Random..." Chayote raised a doubtful eyebrow. "Is the Ultimate Eternal Dragon an evil asshole or something?"

"No... You don't understand. Every time the Dragon Balls of any kind are used, they expel evil energy, because the notion of a wish being granted instead of earned is inherently evil. The more powerful the wish, the more powerful the evil energy. Normally the evil energy just sort of fades away and gets recycled inside the magic of the Dragon Balls, cleansed by them over a period of centuries, but with the Ultimate Dragon Balls, they're so insanely powerful that their evil energy never disappears. It stays and destroys the planet they've been used on in a year unless the Ultimate Dragon Balls are brought back to the same planet they've been used." Mr. Popo said.

"The same planet?" Goku turned his head.

"That's right! Their power is so much more massive than that of ordinary Dragon Balls that they don't just scatter across the Earth, they scatter across the entire Universe! And you must collect and return them within the year, or else their evil energy will destroy the planet." Mr. Popo made sure to gesture as much as possible so that the ignorant humans and the indifferent Saiyans alike both understood the stakes at play here.

"Well..." Chayote scratched the area above her chest and inspected her fingernails. "It's a good thing I'm going off to space then..."

* * *

"Dr. Briefs, you will leave this giant home of yours and face your doom in the hands of the Ginkaku and Kinkaku gang, or else we'll bust in and pull you out by force!" a blue-haired punk yelled at thin air as a massive crowd of less than pleased individuals amassed behind him, led by a pair of armored bandits with eastern-style armor and elaborate face paint that looked to be right at home in this post-apocalyptic setting that the entire world devolved into.

The door to Capsule Corp opened up and the gang looked overjoyed to see one of the richest and most resourceful men alive walking out to surrender to their mob justice but they didn't see Dr. Brief walking out, they saw a towering brute of square facial features that looked as if though he was roughly stitched together and those horrific features only made the emerging giant that much more frightening.

"Leave now!" Artificial Human No. 8 yelled out at the mob in a voice that did relative injustice to his intimidating appearance. "I do not wish to fight anyone, I do not like fighting, but I will defend Dr. Brief until my dying breath!"

"Tough guy, huh?" the smaller of the face-painted bandits jumped off of the chair that rested upon the shoulders of unfortunate slaves captured by his gang and walked out in front of the gang. "Mind giving me and my brother Kinkaku a name we can carve out on your tombstone, then?"

Before the horrid scene could develop any further, a pair of flashes, black and yellow signaled the flight patterns of two flying clouds and before the ringleaders of the gang could react, swift kicks to their jaws sent them flying far away to where they couldn't have caused any trouble to anyone anymore. Their frightened gang all fled in pursuit of their ringleaders while the unfortunate prisoners they've captured fled for their lives.

"Goku-san!" Artificial Human No. 8 proclaimed in unbridled joy. A joy that combined the realization that he wouldn't need to fight any longer as well as one that accurately portrayed his excitement over the fact that one of his favorite human beings ever had just graced him with his presence alongside his friends.

"Yo, Eighter!" Goku raised his hand up as the two ran up to embrace each other.

"Is Dr. Brief home?" Chayote wondered as she tried helping Upa to haul around the chest with the Ultimate Dragon Balls but the boy seemed resolved to carry his own burden as Kami around.

"Yes, Dr. Brief is unaware of this chaos, I think. He's so happy and oblivious all the time..." Eighter nodded his head with a smile. "Why are the four of you here?" he wondered examining Chayote, Goku, Krillin, and Upa.

"We need him to upgrade the ship that Bulma made for me a little..." Chayote explained. "He's as smart as Bulma, if not smarter."

Eighter gestured for the martial artists to follow him and then moved toward the door. A cone of lasers gleamed out from a cybernetic panel beside the door and identified Artificial Human No. 8 as a possible entrant to the building. Alongside the rest of the crew, Eighter went in and took them to Dr. Brief who seemed to have been switching his attention from a exercise show on a television set attached to the ceiling of his lab, a show of questionable moral fiber and integrity, and a gadget that was, as of that moment, just a pile of nuts and bolts and steel plates.

"Oh... Chayote and Goku..." Dr. Brief turned around. "Where is that wife of mine, she's always there to stuff you with cookies when you don't want her around but just when you feel like cookies and milk..."

"Dr. Brief... We're not sure you've heard but..." Krillin poked his fingers against each other before Chayote smacked him with her hips.

"We need you to help us with something. Bulma built a ship for me but it's not fast enough. There is a sample of Saiyan spacecraft technology in where Kakarot was found and Mr. Popo mentioned something about another spaceship in Yunzabit heights... We need something fast enough to carry me all over the universe in less than a year." Chayote spoke work, she wasn't sure how the man would react to the news of Bulma's death, to be entirely honest, as she's never seen him show emotion of any sort other than the glee he displayed consuming his softcore erotic content.

"Around the universe, you say? Yes... I've helped Bulma work on a spaceship a bit like that, much slower than what you need, from what I recall but if you say you've got samples... I should be done with the upgrades in a week or so after the delivery of the tech samples. A pair of weeks if you want a stereo system..." Dr. Brief pointed out.

"He didn't even ask where Bulma is..." Krillin squinted his eyes. "Also... How come installing a functional stereo system takes the same amount of time as building a functional, universal spacecraft?"

Because of how Krillin mumbled those words under his nose as if they were only meant for him and the people around his immediate reach to hear, Dr. Brief paid them no mind whatsoever. Chayote then opened up the chest where the Ultimate Dragon Balls were held and handed one to Dr. Briefs before giving him a Dragon Radar as well.

"I also need the spacecraft to possess a working Dragon Radar for this specific type of Dragon Balls. The Dragon Radar sample here is broken after one of the ample beatings I've taken recently but... It should help, at the very least." Chayote shrugged, looking a bit apologetic about the fact she busted the priceless radar meant to find any of the seven magical wish-granting orbs.

"Oh, I do recall this model, Bulma's craftsmanship, yes..." Dr. Brief stroke his chin as he examined the device. "It should take a couple more days. If you've got time to spare, you can spend the month here, the world outside seems a bit wild recently, must be the Black Friday again..."

Eighter cleared his throat and smacked himself across the chest. He should have felt mad about the fact that Dr. Briefs didn't value the protective services that the gentle giant had provided him but it seemed as if though the absolute ignorance of the world's smartest man was its own reward to the Artificial Human.

"A month? The days don't quite add up, old man..." Chayote showed her teeth in a displeased vocal tone.

"I mean... You will need a television screen and video streaming service, right? High definition demands a good couple of weeks by itself..." Dr. Brief shrugged.

"Stop wasting our time with that garbage you Earthlings call entertainment, better spend half that time installing a decent training device." Chayote dismissed the scientist.

"Oh, Bulma built the spacecraft just for you, will you need me to make it bigger?" Dr. Brief wondered. "It might take more time to make a larger spaceship as aerodynamic, it might raise some problems..."

"Ugh... Fine, just make it enough for me, Kakarot can stay on this pathetic little planet for as long as he wants. I get the clue when I'm not wanted..." Chayote wrapped her arms over her chest and looked away, pouting. She had sort of figured that Bulma would make a spaceship that would only be designed to fit her since the blueprints that the young Saiyan provided Bulma with were all based on one-man space shuttles but it didn't mean that it didn't hurt when the scientist did just that.

"That's okay, we need Goku here to protect the Earth in case Piccolo Jr. finds his way out of the Room of Spirit and Time anyway." Krillin tried calming Chayote down somewhat. It only worked halfway.

"Sir, if you could please also return the Ultimate Dragon Ball when it is no longer useful, I'd be most grateful. If I am to be the next Kami, I need to protect these things as I was instructed to do." Upa spoke up.

"Sure thing, here, kid, you can have them for now, I'll let you know when I will need them." Dr. Briefs handed the Ultimate Dragon Ball back to Upa and shoved the gadget he was working on into a toolbox positioned by the side of the workbench, choosing instead to browse through another toolbox and take out a blueprint that Bulma had made of the spaceship she had spent entire years to design and build.

"So... Gonna be the gonna be the actual God of this rock, huh?" Chayote pocketed her hands as she nonchalantly moved from the lab to the service facilities, having Upa follow her around just since the two of them knew each other the best.

"Yup!" Upa nodded. "It's real scary but it has to be better than getting bossed around by Fortuneteller Baba the whole time. Just to be clear, I think she was preparing to sap my lifeforce away to sustain her own in some sick and twisted ritual anyway..."

"Sounds like her... Either that or sell you off..." Chayote grinned while browsing through the drawers of security officers watching the Capsule Corps premises for new clothes. Upa blushed and yelled unintelligible gibberish at Chayote when she ripped off the remaining strings of her old clothes and began changing in front of him.

"What did I tell you about that sort of thing!?" Upa yelled out.

"Oh, right... Earthlings are real shrewd about that stuff..." Chayote realized and then turned around as if that would have helped anything at all. Luckily for her, Upa followed suit, safeguarding the Saiyan's dignity even though she wasn't sure it needed safeguarding, to begin with.

"Unbelievable, just stripping herself in front of the future Kami!" Upa grumbled to himself in an unexpected return of his squeaky voice from his childhood, one that had begun to disappear bit by bit as the boy matured into his teen years.

"Yo, Upa!" Chayote said.

"What?" Upa mumbled, very nearly turning around to look at her when being spoken to but then blushing and catching himself in the unwilling act turning away.

"I'm glad you'll be the Kami of this place. Who's better to tell the good folk from bad than you, huh?" Chayote spoke with a softer tone than her usual confrontational grunge.

"Are you done?" Upa groaned in frustration, still, judging from the trembling of his voice and the sweet tone of his irritation – Chayote knew he was smiling.

* * *

"So what, do we just raise our hands up and summon the Eternal Dragon as usual?" Krillin pondered, staring at the positioned set of Dragon Balls with black stars on them. A newly built spaceship stood on three, sturdy, metallic legs behind the group, ready to take off the moment the countdown to Earth's doom starts.

"Why are you all looking at me?!" Upa grabbed his head. "Mr. Popo hasn't taught me a thing yet!"

"Come out, Eternal Dragon, appear and grant us our wish!" Goku proclaimed and raised his hands up. The Ultimate Dragon Balls lit up gold as the rest of the world sunk in gloom as dark clouds gathered in the skies.

The orbs started giving off smoke that lingered around before turning into raw, untamed energy and beamed off upward in the shape of a lightning bolt. The spot where the bolt of energy disappeared into became the epicenter of the dark clouds as they circled around the abyssal point where the energy parted the clouds. The Ultimate Eternal Dragon took almost no time at all to show up, its red outlines lighting up the artificial night before the shape of the titanic dragon solidified.

The Ultimate Eternal Dragon didn't appear to feel like any amount of size was a potential limiter to its grandeur. It could have easily fit hundreds of Eternal Dragons from Chayote's memory inside it, judging by its height alone, the Ultimate Eternal Dragon would have reached from the surface to the God's Temple without any trouble at all. Red whiskers waved on the lower part of the Ultimate Dragon's jaw as it beamed its golden eyes at the pitiful in comparison creatures that have summoned it. Instead of the green color of the Eternal Dragon from the ordinary Dragon Balls, the Ultimate Eternal Dragon was blood red with golden horns from both sides of his face with two more prominent protrusions dwarfing the rest of the layer that looked almost beard-like in comparison.

"Now, state your wish!" the Ultimate Eternal Dragon rumbled with its voice, the booming volume of the thing spread far and wide through the city that had cleaned up significantly with no more "Devil" insignia appearing and the forces of order regaining a decent foothold upon the West City and most of the rest of the world.

"Please restore the ordinary Dragon Balls..." Krillin squeaked with a frightened voice. Despite the fearful nature of the pint-sized martial artist, the Dragon appeared to hear him just fine. "C-Can you do that?" the young man wondered, seeming too nervous to take a few seconds of silence as anything less than his absolute failure in properly wording the wish.

"A simple matter..." the golden eyes of the Ultimate Eternal Dragon shined blue. "The Dragon Balls require a lifelink to function properly. I have restored them by linking them to the body and spirit of their original maker."

"W-Wait... What?" Krillin's mouth waved as he was worked up but too frightened to object.

"What bullshit!" Chayote, however, had no such reservations, "They were already linked to Kami, that was the problem, to begin with, you useless dragon!"

"You misunderstand, I have linked the Dragon Balls to the successor of the previous Kami. It was the only way that the Dragon Balls could have worked. They are a Namekian invention and therefore require a Namekian lifelink." The Ultimate Eternal Dragon explained before his outlines lit up with an intense scarlet gleam again. "I have fulfilled your wish, farewell!"

And so the Ultimate Dragon Balls rose to the skies, one after another before a surge of lightning shot them away to seemingly opposite ends of the Universe to be brought together on Earth again in one year's time unless the planet would meet a grim fate.

"I guess now we can't kill Piccolo Jr..." Goku said. "If that guy dies, both the Ultimate Dragon Balls and the ordinary ones will stop working..."

"Dragon Balls... A Namekian invention..." Chayote mumbled the far most important revelation to herself.

"Namekian? What's that?" Krillin wondered.

"That's odd, I never suspected Kami and King Piccolo to be aliens, there were clues but... Namekians?" Chayote scratched her head, too baffled to rush off to space as she needed to do.

"Wait, you know these Namekians?" Upa wondered.

"Sure, most of the Universe knows them, they're a known space-faring race. They used to actively trade with other planets until the Cataclysm." Chayote explained. "Despite not trading with other planets for something close to five hundred years anymore, Saiyan warriors are still taught about Namekians, since they can be quite dangerous opponents with scary techniques under their employ."

"Then why didn't you say anything!?" Upa freaked out.

"Kami and Piccolo didn't look like the Namekians from the pictures I've seen. Their heads were all wrinkly and their skin way too dark. Plus, King Piccolo's spawns looked nothing like Namekians at all..." Chayote appeared worked up before just shrugging it off. "Oh well... I guess they just grow old really weird. Anyway, I've gotta go! See ya when I bring you your ripoff Dragon Balls back!"

Goku stood there in stitches while the rest of the crew just stared at Chayote with blank expressions, the kind they used to look at Goku with when the young man said something profoundly stupid but now the Saiyan girl from outer space took all of that honor for herself before taking off to the depths she came from.

"We've got to collect the Dragon Balls and bring everyone back now..." Krillin was the first one to speak up after Chayote soared through the cosmos in search of the first Ultimate Dragon Ball signal.


	76. Step Into the Grand Tour

„Dragon Ball signal detected, Dragon Ball signal detected!" a sharp, robotic voice croaked, waking Chayote up from a partial stupor of image training in her mind. Despite Dr. Brief doing everything in his power to make the spaceship she traveled in to be capable of comfortably traversing through the entire universe, it still took a long time to get anywhere so Chayote spent most of her time image training which was one of the handier tricks Devil Man taught her.

It was a difficult thing to do, at first. Even if Chayote had pulled it off a couple of times during her training in the Baba's Palace but that didn't mean she could always do so on command. Her focus was all over the place as something kept rustling in her chest, continuously spurting Chayote to rush ahead, put her head down and bust through everything in her way. Sitting down and just imagining things didn't sound like something she'd be capable of for extended periods of time but when the only alternative was staring through the illuminator into vast and empty space – she picked things back up quick.

The biggest problem was the lack of viable imaginary training partners. The challenges she once faced such as Saibamen or Demon King Piccolo have stopped being frightening or in any way stimulating threats. She had never met Demon King Piccolo in his young body, had she done so, maybe she'd have had a much more stimulating training session. Demon King Piccolo was light training now, Goku was the hard mode but she hadn't seen Goku fighting since the tournament which made it difficult to adjust his fighting style and exact power level.

The young Saiyan leaned forward and looked at the planet where the spaceship had turned and begun plotting its course to. The ship's speed slowed down significantly as it prepared to combat against the planet's atmosphere upon entry. Chayote took a gaze at the flashing clock by her side, she had spent four days traveling to this planet. That must have put it anywhere within being on either the other side of the galaxy Earth was in or the closer parts of the nearest one.

The skies of this planet were bright yellow, looking like a jar of bile acid in color, a barf of lemons. Lower still was a thick layer of trees that once the spaceship entered seemed to just dive through and through for fifteen solid minutes. The actual surface of the planet seemed tremendously small compared to the atmospheric part of the planet as well as the massive expanse of leafage parting the lemon skies from the blackness that surrounded Chayote's landing upon touchdown.

The moment that Chayote's space pod opened, a flux of heat hit her face that made the Saiyan's consciousness fade in and out a couple of times. Dr. Brief did mention something about space suits but that was not the Saiyan way. Chayote staggered and slumped right out of her spaceship. She looked down at her hand and saw it blurring before her eyes, the cloth of her clothes seemed to be singing off slowly as light flares lit up in random patches.

The Dragon Ball… She needed to get the Dragon Ball, slump back into the shuttle and shoot off from here as fast as possible. The Saiyan stood back up and staggered on both feet as she looked around and then got back into her spaceship to remove the Dragon Radar from the wall it was planted on to operate it in handheld mode until she found the Ultimate Dragon Ball.

Flying or fighting seemed like a ridiculous notion, even a single faster movement made it seem like Chayote would get hit by the mother of all heatstrokes and pass out. Spacesuits were not the Saiyan way… Like a mantra those words passed through her mind, she was too weak to be of use for her army before but now things were different. She would now be able to fight alongside her peers, that training on Earth had to amount to something…

Chayote reached out and looked on upward at the branches of a tree she'd have to scale. Of course, the Dragon Ball would be on the upper layers of the planet. By now Chayote had managed to put two on top of two somewhat – these trees created a pillow that cushioned the heat. The entire lower part of the planet was essentially one giant shade whereas the higher up one climbed – the worse the heat would have gotten. Who knew how tough it would have been at the top, Chayote just tried her best hoping that she wouldn't have to find out, maybe the Dragon Ball was stuck on a branch somewhere and didn't lay on the top?

Higher and higher she went. Chayote ascended slow and steady, wary not to overexert herself or cause tension in her body that would have given the heat any excuse to knock her out. Her entire body was sweating profusely and threatened to burn her up, patches of her skin already felt irritated by the touch of her clothes, likely she'd get worse and worse burns the longer she stayed outdoors. Things were different in her spaceship, that Dr. Brief was something – managing to replicate the ideal temperature of the Saiyan shuttle just from examining a busted model of a Saiyan pod…

Heat! More intense than she was used to, a spike of it accompanied by a bright, red light. Then pleasant wind… Wind… Chayote's eyes shot wide open and she halted her fall by grabbing a branch and swinging over it. She landed her feet and looked around. She felt glad that her instincts didn't have her stop her fall by using Ki or flying, it would have only made her condition far worse. This was the epitome of a shitty situation – she was attacked, Chayote was sure of it but why whom? There was nothing of note anywhere around her.

A sharp sound of plasma, all too familiar to Chayote, nostalgic even, pierced her ears from behind her and the Saiyan reacted with a light dash to an upward branch, turning around to face the mechanical opponent in front of her. It was a drone, fully mechanical, which was why she couldn't sense it before. Chayote clenched her fists and grit her teeth. What a ridiculous predicament, utterly ridiculous! Her, a Saiyan warrior cornered by a mere drone because she wasn't able to reveal an inch of her true power on this miserable planet. A drone that ranked even lower than a foot soldier on most military forces in the universe.

"I'm not worthless, I'm a proud Saiyan warrior!" Chayote roared out, letting her power rage and burst out, spitting in the face of her own better judgment as she extended her hand and let a Ki blast ravage the poor drone and send it crashing down.

She could hear the explosion but she couldn't' see it, her vision got blurry and her body felt so weightless…

* * *

By the time Chayote opened her eyes, things were much cooler. There was something chilly and pleasant on her forehead and she seemed to be submerged in some liquid. The Saiyan looked around and realized that she was in a primitive bath, filled with some indigo-colored fluid that seemed milky in consistency but felt cool to touch and didn't appear at all affected by the rampant scorch of its home planet. Her salvation on her forehead furrowed and moved, it was alive! Chayote's frightened movements made the native slug on her forehead lob itself over the room off of her forehead and then writhe away from the awakened Saiyan as fast as it could, which, admittedly, was not at all fast and rather a pathetic sight to observe.

"What the…" Chayote mumbled to herself.

"You leave such a noisy Ki signature." A firm and masculine voice came from outside the room that Chayote was in. A tall and athletically built alien walked in from the outdoors, making Chayote wonder if she should act as Earthlings taught her and become flustered due to the fact she was sitting in a bath completely naked but then she noticed that the indigo fluid she was seated in was not at all transparent. "Your anger walks before you do. You would not last long on Planet Beiko"

The alien was a tall humanoid with thick, pink lips and massive, red irises to its eyes that were covered by hairless brows which were a notable feature of the local, as none of his body possessed any semblance of body hair whatsoever. Even its head was completely bald with black spots atop of it. The brains of this species must have been larger than standard for the forehead of this species was taller than most humanoid species, similar to what Chayote now knew old Namekians to look like, except there wasn't a single wrinkle on this alien's body.

"I was attacked." Chayote pouted her lips and looked away, embarrassed by the reprimand.

"So? We fight every day, even when we don't fight for survival, we train and fight each other. Fighting doesn't mean killing yourself with a heatstroke." The alien scolded Chayote again, looking bemused by her presence as his general vibe seemed to be like that of a very uptight fellow, for whatever reason, Chayote just couldn't imagine this species smiling or being all-around chipper. "You're a Saiyan, aren't you? I've seen your tail. You also screamed out "I'm a proud Saiyan warrior" from atop of your lungs which didn't help your condition. Loud yelling builds up heat in your body, children know that…"

"So what if I am?" Chayote looked away with a pout of her lips. She must have looked more like a capricious teen than a proud Saiyan warrior at that moment, it was just that the substance she bathed in was so fresh and cooling and smelled minty that she couldn't think any negative thoughts whatsoever in the bath of that stuff.

"You folk aren't too liked around the universe. Did you come here to cause trouble? Conquer this planet maybe?" the alien asked. Judging by his expression alone, he wasn't just inquiring, he was interrogating Chayote but given how the Saiyan felt like she was in a spa of some sort, she just couldn't help but look right past the interrogation part.

"No. I'm actually looking for this device – the Ultimate Dragon Ball. It's a Namekian invention that is necessary to save Planet Earth from destruction." Chayote answered truthfully, "What is this stuff I'm sitting in? It's so damn relaxing…"

"It's the milk from Maihaku fruit. It takes approximately thirty-two fruits to fill a bath but we needed to drop your temperature fast." The alien pulled out a tough-looking, purple nut from a nearby drawer and showed it to Chayote, once the green man cracked it into two, indigo-colored milk began drooling from within which the man then slurped up, swallowing a good pair of times before the entire shell got emptied. "You're not from the Frieza Army then? We've noticed military drones roaming our planet as if they're looking for something here."

"No, I wish I was though, those drones weren't Frieza Army, they were someone else's, though, if Lord Frieza knew about that military, they wouldn't be around for much longer. Space may be vast but there's only place for one Emperor." Chayote pointed out.

"So you are working for Frieza!" the alien clenched his fists by his sides as they lit up in flames, ready to blast Chayote to smithereens. His power level was just impressive enough to where even a single one of these guys would have been trouble even if Chayote could fight with full power on this infernal planet. "I should have followed my gut and killed you when I spotted you!"

"Wait!" Chayote raised both of her hands, "I told you already – I'm not working for Lord Frieza, I'm saving the Earth at the moment. I would very much like to work for him in the future, it's just that… It's really complicated, you know…" Chayote tried explaining her situation the best she could but one thing that people lying to themselves suffered from was an inability to accurately explain their situation.

"I don't understand. If you treasure your proud Saiyan warrior life, you will explain it to me now. If I will not like your explanation, you should know that you fell by the hand of Shunabehan – a warrior of planet Beiko, the planet that brought up the heroic Paikuhan, so we are not to be underestimated nor will we allow ourselves to be bullied and plundered by you or any other invader!" Shunabehan declared, seeming relatively proud in his own upbringing too.

Chayote explained what she could confidently explain – the fact that she was split off from Frieza Army before becoming enlisted and ended up on Earth, where she had been trained in martial arts and now decided to save the planet by collecting the Ultimate Dragon Balls.

"Hmph, if there truly is such a mystical orb on our planet, you can take it with you and leave. Hopefully, that will make those drones go elsewhere too!" Shunabehan didn't look pleased by hearing the news but he had calmed down in relation to Chayote. "Our species does not have females amongst us, however, I've gathered some clothes for you from our uninitiated warriors. They are about your slender and short build. Your Earthling clothes were ill-suited for the heat of this planet, they burnt off like paper."

"Yeah… I kinda noticed…" Chayote looked down flustered and emerged from the bath, slipping into the long and rather monk-like attire she was given. It came complete with a long but well-fitting bodysuit and a baggy, white dogi on top. Chayote wasn't entirely sure why she was being offered that tall, turban-like hat but she put it on nonetheless, having long and messy dark hair made wearing the hat troublesome as it continued to slip off or just tilt to the side over and over again, embarrassing herself in front of the rest of the tall, green aliens.

"This is Chayote, she is indeed a Saiyan but she isn't with Frieza. She is here for a troublesome little ball, if we give it to her, she will leave and it might be the thing that those drones are looking for as well." Shunabehan explained to two other aliens that looked almost identical to him. It made sense if this species didn't reproduce sexually that they would all look like a bunch of clones of each other, forcing their clothes to have some identifying features to them.

"This is Mekishihan and Kokonatsuhan." Shunabehan gestured at a pair of similar to him fellows, one of whom wore an orange bodysuit and the other one was dressed in all white, even the black top hat that the entirety of the species wore was all white on Kokonatsuhan.

"Excuse me but… Did you, by any means find my Dragon Radar beside me?" Chayote wondered.

"The handheld gadget with the blinking point on it? Sure, it is in Mangochakuhan's treehouse." Shunabehan pointed at a treehouse above the one where Chayote and the other Beiko warriors were by. The leafage layers that were occupied by the Beiko locals were all covered in treehouses massive and subtle and channels of wooden bridges connecting the entire system. Some of the houses and facilities were carved right into the wood.

Chayote jumped up with a hasty dash and felt sweat break on her forehead, by then she had spent enough time away from the milk of Maihaku fruit to feel like she was taking a holiday in hell again. Before she could lose her balance and fall off the complex system of pathways, Shunabehan flashed in by her side with a sonic boom that made it seem like it was a bolt of lightning itself. He gently corrected Chayote's stance with his arm.

"Calm yourself, Saiyan. You said you were taught martial arts on Earth, surely you've been taught proper Ki control." Shunabehan pointed out.

"Yeah, not like… Not dying in what feels like a billion degrees kind of martial arts…" Chayote tried to come up with something wittier than that but the heat just washed away any semblance of cohesive thought from her mind.

"Your Ki is not what you think it is. It is far more diverse than that." Shunabehan pressed his hands by his sides and formed two Ki blasts while a burst of Ki erupted from his body, then the alien's aura ignited and electricity began running up and down his body while the Ki blasts on his sides lit aflame as well. Chayote noticed a handful of identical-looking Beiko warriors admiring Shunabehan's persistence to teach the alien of their ways with a smirk even though their eyes still looked irritated and strict. They must have just been stuck that way…

"When you are angry when you brim with activity and thought, your Ki ignites and raises your heat when you are calm, your Ki is cool. Ki can be cold as ice or it can be a cleansing flame, depending on your mindset when you control it." Shunabehan explained. "Until you learn to control your emotions and your body, you will not be able to fight on this planet or resist extreme temperatures."

"I'm sorry, I'd really love to stay here and learn all that mumbo-jumbo, but I'm in a bit of a rush to find the seven magical balls that will make it so that the Earth won't blow up. I don't think some specific mental state can keep normal humans survive in space for too long or withstand the destruction of their planet?" Chayote got groggy, just like Shunabehan tried to tell her, her balance got all wobbly and she nearly fell over the edge as boiling sweat spilled over her entire body.

Before Shunabehan could scold Chayote, a blinding flash of white made both of them cover up and flinch. The sound of crunchy, shredded trees made everyone present in the village of Beiko warriors to struggle to regain their composure as fast as possible as a gigantic battlebot smashed through trees and sent devastating plasma blasts across the entire community that seemed to be intense enough to terraform an entire landmass into scorched coal if they hit its surface.

"It's a military robot!" Shunabehan grit his teeth.

"She was followed! It's the Saiyan! She's with Frieza after all!" Mangochakuhan pointed at Chayote but Shunabehan shook his head.

"I don't believe so, the blast very nearly hit her too," Shunabehan explained, it was then that Chayote realized that they were standing on the top of a treehouse further from where the plasma blast had nearly hit them.

"Whoa! When did you…?" Chayote tried expressing her shock at Shunabehan's immense speed and power but the Beiko warrior just pressed his hand to her chest as a gesture to calm down and pressed her back against the wall of the nearest treehouse.

"Sit and stay calm. Don't get worked up and don't fall off," he warned her calmly before the entire might of the Beiko warriors descended upon the rampaging battlebot. They moved like jolts of lightning, one flash and they were already there, their fists were fast enough to raise howling gusts of winds, their kicks formed tornadoes and Shunabehan's flaming Ki blasts incinerated the torn off parts of the battlebot until the machine's core became exposed and Shunabehan destroyed it whole with one good handful of blazes, detonating the colossal siege machine with enough intensity to shake up the entire planet's surface.

"Damn… The universe is crazy…" Chayote wondered to herself as just staying on the platform she was put on demanded more effort than she could handle.

Once the titanic battlebot was done with, the Beiko took her to where they found her and, with the little aid from the Dragon Radar, pointed out the spot where the Ultimate Dragon Ball was. They did not emerge from the final layer of the leafage and didn't choose to get exposed to the merciless atmosphere of their planet. Shunabehan just looked to Chayote with a smirk when they ascended close to the topmost layer.

"Let this be your test then, hero of Planet Earth. Heed what I've told you and claim your spoils." He pointed at a nest on the top of a tree.

Chayote jumped up and grabbed hold of the branch nearest to the top and closed her eyes. With the best intentions for tranquility, she bumped her head against the large leaf and made it move out of the way. She didn't breathe when the lemony skies greet her with their spiteful grill, with just calm and tranquility in her head, she approached the nest but then froze in place.

A grand manta-like creature floated over her head, each wing the size of a small town, providing shade to her. Chayote knew it felt too good to be true that she would just let the tyrannical planet blow hot air her way and she'd just take it. The vision became blurry again, just the sight of this thing made Chayote's knees weak and her body feel hefty, she'd plummet again, she knew it. A flash of lightning, Kokonatsuhan's elbow dug into the abdomen of the floating space manta and the fury of the whole Beiko tribe descended upon the majestic sky roamer. Chayote looked to her wrist and pressed a button on her wristwatch. With the aid of her rushing space shuttle, she scooped the Ultimate Dragon Ball up and then dove down, as far and as deep down as she could, closing the door in front of her and letting the temperature inside her shuttle stabilize.

Normal conditions now felt like absolute zero conditions. Chayote looked at the Dragon Ball with six black stars on it with all semblance of strength having left her body. She opened the shuttle again after a good five minutes to greet the Beiko warriors assembling around her shuttle.

"You've got heart, Saiyan warrior. Your instincts also seem to work for you instead of against you. When your quest to save the Earth is complete, we would be honored to train with you." Shunabehan nodded.

"Yeah… If I ever feel like I'd love a bit of burning hell, I'll drop by…" Chayote smirked with a weak expression of her face, the heat seemingly drained her of strength completely, just thinking of facing that manta ray of the skies made the Saiyan belch dry air.

"Take this, it should restore most of your strength. Take that cursed sphere off our planet. In doing so you may just save two planets at the same time…" Shunabehan looked at the black-starred Dragon Ball as if it was the eyeball of the devil itself.

"Oh… That's right…" Chayote realized after taking a nut of the Maihaku fruit off of Shunabehan's hands. "I guess you guys will owe me for taking the heat off of your planet."

"You will be doing no such thing, I'm afraid… But that's okay, we like it hot." Shunabehan nodded with a comfortable smirk on his face and saw Chayote's space pod blasting off into the skies above, despite the fact that she left familiar faces behind, the young Saiyan had to admit she felt happy and relieved to be departing from this despicable oven of a planet.

* * *

A bulky, orange man with horns on two sides and long, brown hair entered the hall of his lord. The orange-colored commander was accompanied by multiple platoons of soldiers from both sides and kneeled before a figure sunken in shadows, wearing a black hood with an orange scarf over its neck. The lord seated in a throne of skulls had black shoulderblades and a brown medallion with straps around it and a yellow undercoat and wore a helmet that seemed to be fitting to serve him as ample protection in just about any planet in space he would descent to. Only shriveled, dark green lips could be seen of the lord's flesh.

"Our drones have failed to secure the Dragon Ball, Lord Slug." The kneeling commander informed his liege, looking worked up about speaking of failure in front of him.

The shadowy figure raised its finger and a spark of yellow lit up on the tip of his orange glove. The bulky commander of Lord Slug's forces shook his hands out in front of him in terror.

"P-Please, Lord Slug, show mercy, the Dragon Ball has left Planet Beiko, our radars show it to be moving towards the edge of the North Galaxy!" the frightened giant fumbled out.

Slug's finger beam hit a soldier by the side of his commander square in the chest and sent the poor fellow down on the floor with a smoking crater in his chest cavity and no semblance of the soldier ever having been alive, to begin with on the soldier's face or body.

"Find it, do not fail me again. Perhaps I was too merciful to spare you the wrath of the Beiko warriors, renowned through the galaxy. Intervene directly, if necessary." Lord Slug ordered with a husky voice coming out of an ancient and shriveled body, surrounded in grand armor to make the Lord look at least a bit as threatening as he'd have been in his prime. "Nothing short of the Frieza Army elite is a challenge to us, Commander, I expect results."

"Yes, Lord Slug!" Commander Zeeun kneeled before his Lord again and left the room, sweaty and frightened to his core but glad to have survived the encounter as had it not been Lord Slug's own idea to send his army and heavy equipment to Planet Beiko and not invade directly, Commander Zeeun would not have left the throne room with his life.

Whoever that troublesome meddler that swiped the Dragon Ball right off of Lord Slug's face was, they'd know a world a pain soon enough for making Commander Zeeun worry about his own survival, he'd make sure of that personally if need be.


	77. Chayote in the Land of the Giants

Chayote stared at the random panel of her spaceship computer that announced the signal of yet another Dragon Ball being caught within the range of the ship's radar. It would take significant willpower to not smash something important to pieces when the blasted thing continued to croak its song until the ship landed on the planet that the ball was meant to be in.

This time the ship directed Chayote to a planet lush with green shades, like a proud space emerald hazy with white fluff all over that was the planet's clouds. It was tough to say much about a planet from just this much detail but given how the planet was approaching the edge of the Frieza Army colonization range, it might have been just a couple of years away from being either modernized or wiped out.

Chayote observed the tall forests of the planet very carefully. While the familiar landscape invited nausea and frustration deep in her gut while reminding her of Planet Beiko she landed on earlier, this planet didn't look to share the lemon skies of Beiko, quite the opposite, it seemed to be a living, natural paradise. Blue skies, lush forests that did not require rich leafage to drown it in shade. It reminded Chayote a lot of jungles found on Earth. Supersized, of course…

A massive bee took off when Chayote's pod landed beside the flower it was drinking from. While initially there appeared to not be anything wrong with that scenario, once Chayote closed in to both the flower and the bee she realized the reason why this paradise wasn't colonized – the flower seemed easily to be the same size as her spaceship and the bee was truthfully large enough to be like dogs found on Earth.

"Accessing records from nearby space stations… Transferring data…" the ship's computer began running down the vast array of processes it ran through. Dr. Brief had installed all sorts of functions into the spaceship, he had its systems hack into the records of nearby space stations for information on the planets Chayote visited while the spaceship took soil samples and various atmosphere and temperature measurements.

The only part of that process Chayote cared about was the part where she didn't have to do anything for all that to happen. If Dr. Brief wanted a horseback ride off of Chayote's progress, he was free to have it as long as Chayote didn't need to do anything other than fight or eat.

A thud of shaking sensations forced the Saiyan to turn around. Just in time to notice a rushing beetle that had his horn down and was ready to ram Chayote's spaceship while it worked its scientific magic. The Saiyan cursed quietly and took off.

"Damn it, my spaceship's not your dung ball!" she yelled out, kicking the beetle in the front of its head and forcing it to shake, flip over and begin spasms in its six feet while it breathed its last. Chayote wondered if perhaps this thing was edible, she could only live off of space paste for so long…

The specifics of preparing gigantic space beetles were lost on the Saiyan girl. She just sort of flung pieces of it she managed to rip off atop of the roasting flames and then picked them up to eat once she thought they were okay. The first time she tried it, Chayote almost threw up when body-temperature protein goop ran down her mouth instead of what she had assumed would be meaty. While the beetle could have used fifteen good minutes of cooking, what it did was scare Chayote off of eating bugs ever again.

This experience wasted not only the supersized body of a dead space beetle but also Chayote's time as well. The Saiyan looked into her spaceship while it ran through its calculations and downloaded information and pulled out the handheld Dragon Radar. Shit would hit the fan if she ever realized her promise to smash the computer system of the ship, annoyed by the irksome detection noise. The Dragon Radar would stop functioning, leaving her to roam each and every planet in search of Dragon Balls. Being over a week into her quest already, it would take Chayote a mandatory trip home and whoever knew how long more until Dr. Brief fixes the radar…

It all basically ran down to the fact that if Chayote ever was to get angry beyond control, she'd spell out doom for the entire Earth. Although, given how the Ultimate Eternal Dragon claimed that Dragon Balls were "a Namekian invention", wouldn't that mean that someone on Planet Namek would know about making them? Maybe if she does screw up royally, she can still use those Dragon Balls to restore the Earth again?

Fat chance, most likely, Chayote didn't have the best impression of Namekians after one of them nearly took over the world and trapped her in a rice-cooker and his spawn killed Krillin. She didn't need to deal with a whole planet of such massive assholes, plus, Ultimate Dragon Balls sort of implied they were quite powerful, who knew if the Namekian Dragon Balls could even overpower them if they did end up destroying the Earth?

A loud hiss made a chill run down Chayote's spine. She turned around to face a crocodile that might have been as tall as the triceratops back on Earth and its jaws were twice that size once they opened. The Saiyan flew out of the way of the crocodile's attempt to snap its jaws over her but a tail smack sent her crashing through a bunch of trees, that were tall and thick enough to hit Chayote harder than mountains she's crashed through back on Earth.

The Saiyan clenched her fists as her aura burst forth in a furious burn. She smashed the wooden remains of the stump she laid on and erupted from the tree with a deafening battle cry, ready to peel the skin and the scales off of the reptilian bastard if she needed to. All that sitting around in the shuttle, doing nothing, meeting no fun or impressive opponents to perform mental training on. She had barely seen enough of the Beiko warriors to image train with them… Such elementary training had gotten boring the second time she tried it.

Before Chayote could deliver the first blow, a blast of wind sent her reeling and covering her face, struggling against being blown away. When she did manage to focus her gaze amidst the walls of wind flapping right into her face, she saw a hawk landing atop of the croc and ripping into the reptile's flesh with its claws while it pecked at the reptile's eyes. The bird of prey implied that it could have scooped up and taken the reptile away like this and it was certainly larger than its prey but it had to restrain the croc's resistance before taking it.

The hawk's claws raked through the crocodile's flesh, ripping off skin and flesh alike, tearing off strings that seemed like crocodilian bacon before taking off. Chayote sighed, she had thought that she'd have to take on both of these at the same time but the crocodile took a dive in a nearby pond while the eagle took off to the skies with strings of flesh it had scored for itself and its possible chicks.

"Alright, best to pick up my Dragon Ball and not linger around…" Chayote nodded and reached for her back pocket. It only figured that she'd find absolutely nothing where the radar was supposed to be hanging. The Saiyan turned around and tracked the ground she covered recently after the crocodile threw her away with a tail smack.

"I should have asked Dr. Brief to make a radar for the Dragon Radar…" she groaned, by that point talking to herself had become second nature. She had spent considerable time by her lonesome before, after leaving Upa and Bora behind to train for the World Martial Arts Tournament but after that time she had gotten used to sticking around someone so talking to herself began seeming unusual before it became the norm again.

Chayote didn't even sense anything attaching to her, the first thing she sensed out of the ordinary was when all semblance of weight disappeared and she began flying upward. She had been used to flying but never against her own will. This sudden flight had even managed to startle the Saiyan as she turned around and threw a Ki blast but failed to hit anything. Only when she looked up did Chayote realize that a strand of silk had stuck to her bottom and dragged her up to a web of a supersized spider that had lost all hope for such a small creature to even wander so high up to its web.

While this situation had only aggravated Chayote's frustration at first, once she noticed a pearly gleam in the spider's web, her mood improved drastically.

"The Dragon Radar!" she exclaimed and put her arms in front of her. She hadn't used Ki in such a way before but there was no reason for her to not be able to do so. A mighty though transparent explosive Ki wave expanded around Chayote, tearing the Saiyan out of the spider's trap while taking a sizable chunk out of the spider's web as well. The titanic arachnid itself emerged from the offside corners of the web, making unintelligible gestures at the persistent Saiyan since it was not capable of speech or even anything resembling something vocal.

"Piss off!" Chayote yelled out, letting her aura burst again while she charged at the spider with a flight of her own control. A neat, right cross sent the spider reeling back on its hind legs as it threw its frontal ones up. A pair of stomps and kicks from Chayote, as she just expressed the vexed mood this planet put her in on the nearest creature she had an excuse to vent out on, made the arachnid to curl up into a ball and roll away on its own web.

Chayote took off toward the Dragon Radar and freed it by blasting a few of the key strands of supersized spider silk around it. She cuddled up the radar and pressed it to her chest before pulling it away and looking at it. There it was… The Ultimate Dragon Ball, just a couple of hundreds of meters away. The Saiyan evaded the thick trees to make it to a larger clearing and crossed her arms over chest, pouting her lips as she examined a small herd of humongous goats, going to town on the grass that was larger than Chayote herself if measuring the length of one blade against her size.

"What a crazy planet!" a voice came from the side, someone had cleared the forest from a different side.

"Blast it all to hell, I say!" the owner of the first voice wasn't alone.

"Wait though… The planet itself seems pretty good… Are you sure we can spare just throwing all that money away?" the first one argued.

Chayote did not expect to see a pair of normal-sized aliens around these parts, she had expected to see the Frieza Army armor on top of them even less. These were early scouts, as close to freelancers as Frieza's Army tolerated, scouting the farthermost ridges of the space empire for new planets to either enroll in Frieza's array or to mark for decimation. It was rare for such scouts who were money-grubbing scoundrels at heart to be able to reduce it to space dust themselves.

"W-Wait… What's that?" a tall and muscular red alien pointed at Chayote. It was an impressive specimen of bulk and physical power and a pair of inward-bent horns rested at the sides of the alien's head while a long, single wave of black hair ran down in-between the horns. He was pointing at Chayote.

"It's… Shit… It can't be a local, can it? I mean she's normal-sized…" the second one, a purple humanoid with a large, bumpy nose, covered with orange spots all over his body scratched his head as the pair took it closer to Chayote.

"Hey… Look at that… She's a Saiyan!" one of them pointed at Chayote's tail.

"A Saiyan? Must be low-class trash sent here to clean this planet… Odd, doesn't seem like the type of planet Saiyans would send their weaklings to. The poor thing would get gobbled up on the first day…" the fishy alien grumbled to himself.

"That's survival of the fittest for you… Hey! Saiyan! Can you speak!?" the devil-like alien waved his hand as the pair approached Chayote who just continued to float devoid of any signs of life. The Frieza Army… Scouts but still… Her quest for being found, for being acknowledged was over. Here it was – she could have just told them everything and asked them to take her to the nearest Frieza Army military station.

"Forget about it, the chick grew up in a planet full 'a giant goats and snakes… She's probably all wild and stuff, what's even the use of such a soldier, those Saiyans are nuts…" the fish-face shrugged. For some reason his words made Chayote feel outraged. A useless soldier he said…

Neither of them could see or react to Chayote move. Her elbow crushed that bumpy nose of the purple-skinned fish guy, sending slurps of green blood out from somewhere underneath it. Chayote roared as her frustration oozed and her opponent was in no condition to prevent the utter beatdown she put him through. Both of these dweebs felt stronger than Kakarot's brother, but after one kick to the side of the fish-face's neck he fell down lifeless.

Chayote flashed up to the face of the larger alien, staring him in the eyes with a mad pair of eyes that seemed like it was barely able to resist the impulse to beat him down thoroughly just like she did with his friend.

"Your ship. Where is it?" she asked, speaking in a husky voice of low volume for her tone.

"I'm… I'm beginning to think you're not loyal to the Frieza Army…" the alien whined out in a panicking tone.

Before he could register what was happening, Chayote thrust her punch into the fellow's gut, her fist went clean through the armor and sunk in turquoise blood without much resistance from the muscular structure of the alien's body. Her next motion was not a finishing blow, it was the swipe of the alien's scouter off of his face as intense, green light began glowing from inside the alien's wound and he flew off, carried away by a Ki blast that detonated once it traveled a fair distance from Chayote, safe for it to detonate in.

"A useless soldier…" Chayote hissed through the words that incited her loss of reasoning which cost her the entirety of her dream. The scouter without a doubt transmitted everything to the nearest thing listening on this frequency which would have been the nearest military station. Loss of scouts barely bothered anyone, that was their purpose – to check faraway planets if they were good for being colonized. Given how they were soldiers of fortune and not loyalty, they died out left and right and nobody bothered spending on training them or shed any tears for them.

"These goats are unbelievable…" Chayote turned to the goats that peacefully continued to chew on man-sized patches of grass while casual murder occurred by their side. The Frieza Army armor that the fish-face wore slipped on Chayote quite well, they were made to be of adaptable sizes since all sorts of different races and genders took part in the Frieza Army and it was more practical to make a breakthrough invention of an adaptable armor substance than make one for each different type and build of soldier, incorporating all the different alien physiologies in mind as well as the results of everybody's training and the bulk they'd acquire serving Lord Frieza.

Despite admiring the cold-blooded nature of these braindead animals somewhat, Chayote realized that the Dragon Radar pointed at one of them having the Dragon Ball and, true enough, one of them did. Albeit, it did take Chayote a scary amount of time to realize that it had gobbled one down together with the grass it ate. The Saiyan extended a hand outward, sending a concentrated Ki wave that penetrated the goat in the middle. One smelly and sticky dash later, Chayote pressed a Dragon Ball with one black star on its front.

A deafening bellow made the Saiyan turn around in fear as her head promptly disappeared into her body, digging through the entire length of her neck. A grey, humanoid giant with black, shark-like eyes and a sharp protrusion at the front of its head like a mohawk of sorts pointed at Chayote and continued to yell something that must have been the local equivalent of obscenities. While taking one of these on seemed doable, once what seemed like the entire tribe joined in on the Chayote hate train, the Saiyan decided to bolt with her treasure while she still had the chance.

The rampant quakes on the ground from the thudding feet of the giants made Chayote appreciate the fact that she could fly, the snaps of trees as the giants smashed through them, pushed or ripped them out of the ground with their bare hands to get to the pesky Saiyan who couldn't have been much larger than a horsefly to these titans. This wasn't good… She'd need some time to set up the departure of her spaceship, she'd never do it with all of these goat farmers on her tail.

"Solar Fist!" Chayote yelled out after turning around to face the giants and placing her hands on her face. She didn't know it would work, she had never even trained with Tenshinhan even though she did observe the technique more than a couple of times and she did sense the Ki movement within the three-eyed warrior's body when he performed this technique. Son Goku ripped techniques other people used all the time and he was a low-class warrior, just like Chayote…

A beam of blinding light burst forth, all of the giants grunted and covered up their itchy and blinded eyes as they stamped and thrashed about, knowing full-well that the goat-slayer would flee their hands before long. By the time that the tribe of giants could look again, all they could see was a pearly-white spaceship taking off into the skies and fleeing the planet's atmosphere.

"Planet Monmaasu, analysis and sample collection complete! Resuming the scan for the Dragon Balls!" the computer proudly announced while Chayote rested her back in the soft cushion she spent way too much time in while in-between travels.

"Well… At least one of us had a great time today…" she sighed, looking down at her slightly bent out of shape armor – a useful acquisition although nowhere nearly so as the second out of the seven Dragon Balls Chayote had obtained on Monmaasu.

Back on Earth, she'd have killed for an armor set like this one. Or a scouter, even if it was an older model. Ironically enough, now she did kill for it and yet she felt more lost than happy of this acquisition. She had always thought that she wanted nothing more than to return to the Frieza Army and yet on Monmaasu she not only slain two Frieza Army scouts and looted them but also chose to continue her goose chase to save Earth instead of fulfilling the only thing she fought and lived for since returning to life.

And yet she not only could still control Ki, but she also excelled at it now better than she's ever done before. Now that she beat the shit out of a pair of members of the army she always wanted to join and chose to save the Earth instead…

All this chaos, all those misunderstood, boiling feelings down in her gut made Chayote angrier and angrier by the minute and it would now be days until she would see another thing to vent all of that frustration out on.


	78. Down Where It's Wetter

"Huh… What kind of planet is this?" Chayote stared through the window onto a lonely, cerulean orb floating in space, covered with cottony, white fluff over it instead of any visible patch of land.

"Data not found." A cybernetic voice informed the Saiyan before the robotic voice resumed the "Dragon Ball signal detected" song that just couldn't shut up whenever the ship had approached a planet with a Dragon Ball on it.

"Can't you scan it from up here?" Chayote wondered but it seemed as if though Dr. Brief had designed this ship without any social capabilities of entertaining its crew's requests. She knew better than to try and press any buttons though. While this entire vessel was put together halfway from a Saiyan design, it was almost like operating witchcraft to Chayote so as long as the thing worked she let it do its own thing.

The Saiyan pressed the handle that authorized the ship's descent. The only input she felt she had was when the ship stopped to hover over a planet as if inquiring if Chayote wanted to land or if she wanted to keep moving on. As if she was in any position to skip through planets. She was already a handful of weeks into the quest and while she did get some progress under her belt with a pair of Ultimate Dragon Balls under her belt, there was still more than half of the universe to explore.

Prompted by Chayote's command, the spaceship moved out of its paralysis and began accelerating toward the world's surface, garnering heat and speed. One detail that Chayote couldn't help but notice was the vast amount of static electricity garnering around the spaceship's blaze when it entered the atmosphere. The weather on the planet must have been remarkably stormy though Chayote couldn't feel any of the raging winds while on her spaceship.

"What the… You mean the Ultimate Dragon Ball is underwater?" Chayote wondered when the spaceship plunged a good fifty meters underwater and then floated up to the surface after the force of the crash had left from underneath it in the shape of waves and hectic ripples.

Was it of any surprise that the ship did not speak to Chayote? At this point, she would have been far more surprised if the thing did speak to her. Thunder cracked the sky open, sending a profuse bleed of rain down over the drowned planet. The skies weren't exactly dark per se, whatever gas had accumulated in the skies let plenty of sunlight through, while the storms made Earth's light breezes pale in comparison, they were nowhere near as gloomy.

"It's not like I'm gonna dive down there myself…" Chayote grumbled and tied her arms over her chest. She might have been capable of surviving for at least twenty minutes underwater but she wasn't sure what she was dealing with as far as this planet was concerned. For all she knew, the air of this place might have been some terrible poison or the water might not have been water at all but some corrosive acid… The last thing she needed now was to let the armor she looted off of freaky Frieza Army fish guy as well as her bottom-tier scouter to corrode.

The Saiyan just closed her eyes and imagined fighting what little data on the Beiko planet warriors she had gathered. She had witnessed their speed and profound Ki manipulation abilities first hand. Judging from what Krillin and Goku told her when they briefed on their battle with King Piccolo and his lackey, they had similar abilities where their Ki could mimic the effects of the elements. Their Ki could turn hot when their spirit was surging and cold as ice when it was serene.

"Planet Sando." The ship declared out of the blue, breaking Chayote's concentration and session of image training. "The planet has a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and a rotational period equal to 0,32 Earth days. The common temperature of the planet is 272 degrees Celsius, however, due to the planet's surface being primarily comprised of water, the depths of the planet up to the core are nearly freezing, resulting in extreme and violent storms as the elements converge with the cool steam being boiled by the scorching air. An interesting factoid is that the air particles of this planet have microscopic fragments of diamond that reflect limited sunlight in a magnificent gleam, making the planet's surface a deadly but gorgeous shimmer to behold."

"So the whole planet is just a bunch of water!?" Chayote dropped her jaw. "With that logic, the Dragon Ball might be at the bottom of the goddamn planet in the core itself…"

A deafening thud made the Saiyan look at the source of the noise with a bemused expression, witnessing cracks in the frontal door of her shuttle. Little by little, Chayote's eyebrows twitched into a downward slope while her teeth moved from the peeled upward lips of her mouth.

"Is that a trident? Am I being attacked with tridents right now!?" she yelled out, kicking at the door when it refused to open and jumping out of the ship, taking a plunge underwater.

Truthful to her instinct, outside swam a bunch of fish-like beings with flippers for their backside, covered with red, scaly heavily enough to assume biological armor skin, the locals possessed a wavy mouth that extended from one bony protrusion where ears should have been to another. Facial markings and bony protrusions littered their heads with each specimen possessing their own signature pattern of cartilage and facial armor formations. Each alien had four eyes staring at Chayote like small beams within the holes in the armor.

Numbers ran down Chayote's scouter as she looked around the folks, letting her Ki sensory abilities pay attention to those behind her as the creatures rotated around her with their three and a half meters of length and significant bulk. It was of little surprise that one of these bastards could skewer the hull of her shuttle that was meant to withstand the inhospitable conditions of space. These fishfolk had power levels ranging from around 750 to twice that. Nothing of note or worry to Chayote but almost immediately her scouter picked up a signal that might have been eight hundred kilometers below her. One that nullified the readings of these fish-people and made Chayote's scouter heat up, prompting her to quickly turn it off so that it didn't crack or blow up on her face which was a nasty feature of the older models.

It was unfortunate that the massive reading located in the deepest reaches of the planet's core might have made the use of the scouter problematic because even the older models might have functioned as decent universal translators. Now she was stuck underwater, surrounded by fishfolk warriors with no idea what their problem was. Most sentient species tended not to attack aliens that landed on their planet, then again, Chayote was donning the Frieza Army armor…

Fighting underwater seemed like a drag. Chayote could feel how sluggish her movements were almost immediately but it helped that her own power level surpassed that of the locals' by almost ten times. By the time she figured out that using her Ki for flight while underwater made her move similarly to these fish-men, eliminating whatever measly biological differences there were that inhibited her movements, the squadron was almost done for. Goopy, lapis-colored blood began filling the area of the ocean and the fish-folk used that muddled water for their retreat. It was fortunate since Chayote felt short of air, with quick reaches she emerged and climbed into the open shuttle before shutting the door.

She could feel the planet's bothersome heat flowing through the crack, it was just another hindrance that pissed her off to no end but ultimately had little effect. Chayote ran through what she recalled being the contact function to reach out to Dr. Brief, she wanted to know how bad of a problem this crack was and if the ship could have fixed it. Despite the signal working as intended, nobody picked up.

"I wonder what Dr. Brief doing… Maybe Kakarot resurrected Bulma and the rest already so they're all having a picnic or something…" Chayote wondered. Imagining a picnic helped her calm down a bit, being angry was a fun state of mind to fight in but it was pointless when figuring important details such as these out.

* * *

Dr. Briefs sneezed in his laboratory, hunched over a small TV screen positioned on his worktable on which bodacious Earthling females were performing their stretches while practicing basic math, counting from one all the way up to two in a rhythm of their stretching.

"Oof… One, two… One, two…" Dr. Brief shook his head to ease himself from the sneeze back into the rhythm of his favorite background show to run while he worked. Seeing how both his work and the curvy yoga babes were on Dr. Brief's mind, the man seemed to utterly ignore the red light beeping behind him.

* * *

Having completed her basic training and knowing how to operate the basics of the gear that Saiyans employed on their noble quest of conquering planets and removing all traces of intelligible life so that they could have been used as intergalactic real estate, Chayote picked off her scouter and turned it off, pressing a few buttons on the panel on the side to ignore the largest reading before its readings became too large for the scouter to operate. The Saiyan then applied it back where its place was and opened the door, taking a deep breath while she tried finding Planet Sando on the scouter's database of languages.

Of course, Planet Sando was one of those remote planets at the edge of Frieza Army's controlled territory that had absolutely no coverage from its services, the scouter could neither translate from Sando to universal nor the other way around. Chayote let her Ki surge and burst forth from her body as she used the same principles she'd have used when flying her fastest while taking a plunge underwater. It didn't take long for Ki signatures to begin circling her from all sides.

It was those same local soldiers, this time they were wiser than to try and rush at Chayote with their spears and tridents, this time the folks snapped their mouths, sending some rippling waves at Chayote from afar. The Saiyan tried to just rush through, just a few hundred meters in and it was already getting way too dark and cold for a comfortable and fun fighting time. The underwater pressure waves blasted at the Saiyan with more ferocity than she'd anticipated. It was as if all of her bones snapped all at once for a brief moment when one of them hit and her ears began shrieking bloody murder – this wasn't just Ki they were hitting her with. Whatever it was, it seemed to be targeting the moisture in Chayote's own body and turning it against the Saiyan's own physiology, somehow.

Everything went black and Chayote couldn't hear a damned thing due to the deafening bursts of the jaw-snapping waves around her. Then the tridents started, Chayote began throwing her arms and feet to the side, threatening to outright murder anyone she could get her hands on but these buggers were smarter than to fight someone that's proven to be vastly stronger than them. They used their homeland advantage, their own inherited way of fighting off an invader and while it wasn't like they'd feast on Chayote's bones for all too long as there wasn't much of the young woman to feast on, but it was the grievous offense of her invasion that irked them. The Saiyan didn't need a translator to tell a territorial animal defending its pride, she had faced off against plenty of dinosaurs and flightless birds somewhere in between a reptile and a bird back on Earth that acted very similarly to this.

Chayote threw her hands out and shut her airway off, nearly giving in to her anger-led instinct to roar as she expelled an explosive Ki wave from her entire body, wasting far too much of her Ki in the process but she had hoped to, at the very least, dispatch of one or a few of these fishfolk which would then have scared the rest off as well. Nothing of that sort seemed to be happening, sadly…

She could sense every single signature floating around her, circling her for another round of concentrated underwater shockwaves that robbed her of her senses and a way to fight back while they then would have rushed around her and stabbed at her again. Their tridents packed a wallop, while they lacked the strength to outright impale the Saiyan, they could easily break through her armor and leave bothersome flesh wounds with each thrust.

They sent their shockwaves again, this time something akin to her salvation greeted Chayote's eye – a mossy blob of green down below, it was right there the whole time but Chayote couldn't see it due to the inherent darkness of the abyss – something that her rampant Ki blasts rectified temporarily. Operating by sheer memory, the Saiyan swam behind the float and found it to be surprisingly rigid. It was as if this was just common seaweed but the pressure of so deep down hardened it to be tough as steel as, despite its blobby softness, the weed seemed to resist pressure and become hard like something to stab with when pressurized – might have been what these fishfolk were using to stab at Chayote with…

The shockwaves seemed to bounce off of the wondrous abyssal weed while the Saiyan kicked off and continued her dive, forming a Ki blast in her right hand to illuminate her way if only a little bit. There came the soldiers again, bombarding her with their weaponry, failing to keep up with the Saiyan, the Sandoans send their weaponry torpedoing through the oceans right at her. Chayote let her Ki burst in an explosive bubble that deflected the rushing weaponry and then took a sharp turn to hide behind one of the moss formations that seemed to just be floating around.

What a curious planet indeed. Entire civilizations residing in floats of hardened seaweed, positioned all throughout the deeper layers of the ocean planet, from hundreds of meters under the surface, where the temperature was like that of Earth's warmest resorts, all the way to the unsurmountable Ki signature lurking at the planet's core. A mysterious entity that Chayote wanted to have nothing in common with unless absolutely necessary. These folks had so many inventive ways to fight, such impressive stamina and resistance to underwater pressure… Space was a remarkable place to train. If only Chayote had the time to spend just one year in each of these planets she had visited… Sadly, time was a luxury she lacked the most.

The Saiyan kicked off of the mossy structure and took a plunge downward, this time restraining her instinct to dive with her full speed. Even when the burning sensation set into her lungs that she needed to emerge for air, Chayote restrained it. Slow and steady, judging from her time on Earth, she could spend around twenty minutes underwater, she'd start feeling like she needed air since at least two minutes down under and feel that dread and agony the entire time through. Her body was more of a whiny bitch than she knew, it was only when Chayote got truly stuck in one of Earth's caverns while preparing for the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament that she discovered how long truly she could spend underwater…

The Saiyan pulled out the handheld radar she held by her side, the Saiyan formed a Ki blast by it and her heart froze – the radar was done for. It showed absolutely nothing and seemed all-around inoperable. The Saiyan clenched her fists, forming emerald Ki beams that she just blasted randomly in each direction. Now she wanted those fishy bastards to find her so that she could bash their brains in and let off some steam, also to avenge them possibly dooming the Earth.

A crystal gleam caught Chayote's attention as her Ki blast passed through something interesting, she was by this point a good three hundred kilometers down under and it was tough to say if it was the abhorrent water pressure strangling her with each passing moment or her own boiling fury that made the veins around her head feel like bursting but that one golden gleam caught her attention because it was the golden shine of salvation. The Ultimate Dragon Ball was just floating on the water. The fluid underneath it was pressed too dense for the Dragon Ball to drown. It was a stroke of good luck unlike what Chayote was used to – maybe less so given that she had checked the location of the Dragon Ball before diving and only needed to dive down deep enough to find it, but the fact that she noticed it nevertheless was fortunate.

The last thing she needed was to meet whatever lurked in this planet's core and sent her scouter into a stressful fit. Feeling like the strangulation of the abyssal pressure was just about forcing the water into Chayote's lungs, the Saiyan blasted upward, thrusting her hands down and firing Ki blasts that detonated right by her face, aiding with her rapid ascent. There came the fusillade of abyssal shockwave techniques and trident rushes.

Chayote turned into a furious hedgehog of elbows, kicks, and punches, bashing a few of the Sandoans to lapis-colored mess while she emerged from underwater, gripping the Ultimate Dragon Ball together with a handful of the seaweed now turned to paste due to the sudden emergence to the surface. The Saiyan carefully scraped off the seaweed off of her prize as she observed the fishfolk diving back to their homes now that the surface dweller had left their domain. The Saiyan examined the cuts and bruises all over her body, feeling the warm sensation of blood trickling down a few of the nastier ones and wondered if that seaweed maybe could have served as decent anti-septic and a makeshift bandage. She'd need to affirm that with the codex of information that her ship had downloaded off of the nearest space station.

* * *

A round, building-sized vessel lingered above the raging seas that formed waves eleven meters tall. The shuttle opened its door, exposing the platoon of soldiers clad in white armor similar in appearance and texture to that which covered the walls of the ship they came in as they lined up, ready to take a plunge. A screen flashed by the side of the commander of the troops, a tall and staunch, orange Adonis with horns on the sides of his head and rich, mahogany-colored mane.

"Commander Zeeun, the priestesses claim the Dragon Ball is no longer there. Return to the cruiser and do not waste the lives of our men." Lord Slug's withered, timber-shaded lips still holding a pair of rotten and crooked teeth stated.

"Again?" Commander Zeeun exclaimed with frustration in his voice. "Someone seems to be collecting these universal Dragon Balls as well…"

"Yes, it appears our situation is most dire. Just when the clan of priestesses had located the traces of Namekian magic that matches the signature of Dragon Balls, a surge of Namekian magic spread them all throughout the Universe. Sadly, we have no other method than the rituals of our priestesses to track the Dragon Balls' location. You will return to the cruiser until you are dispatched again, Commander." Slug repeated an order which was a luxury only granted only to those that were not to be blamed for the failure that preceded the order.

"Whoever the other party gathering these universal Dragon Balls is, they seem to possess a more precise radar than our magic-tracking it seems…" Commander Zeeun growled and slammed his fist at the button that shut the shuttle door. Some of the Lord Slug's army seemed relieved by the fact that they would not need to enter the deep of Planet Sando's oceans and encounter the infamous abyssal dread that took residence in the husk of the planet's core.

The shuttle took off and joined with the planetoid-size cruiser floating by the orbit of Planet Sando. In a dark room located within the cruiser, a caste of green feminine shapes comprised of a serpentine body shape and wet, slug-like skin and multiple mouths filled with lines of razor teeth scattered across the bodies of the four-armed priestesses wearing revealing dresses for their appearance that most species across the universe would find revolting, lacking eyes or any other notable features other than their slug-like bodies and matchstick-thickness arms divined the location of the next Ultimate Dragon Ball for their Lord, breaking off twigs and branches of the Ajisa trees cultivated inside the cruiser, native to Planet Namek and using them to mix salt rubbed in emerald body secretion of Namekian mixed with the blood of the priestesses themselves that they've added into the mix while one, largest of all sisters, waved her arms around a floating skull with a large horn on its center, hoping for a projection to beam from its eyes, cast onto the dark wall of the temple room.


	79. A Game of Space-Tag

A white orb landed rather unceremoniously onto the steel of the landing bay, tripping over it and planting on its size. There was absolutely no way for the ship to damage the landing hall since it was built out of the same stuff that bigshot spacecraft was made out of whereas the ship was built out of simple materials located mostly around a single planet rather separated from the rest of the Universe and having very little notable feats of technological development apart from their near-miraculous capsule technology.

Chayote burst forth from the door that she had to bust down because they didn't open right anymore. Something in the tridents that scraped her ship on Planet Sando had shorted the tech of the surrounding area out, though, given how the errors have begun long after her departure, it might have been a result of a natural misfortune made more likely due to moderate damage to the ship's hull.

"I'd like if you took care of it…" Chayote mumbled to the scurrying, flat-faced aliens that seemed more stricken by her careless and rather brutish attitude than providing a reason for Chayote to fear them.

"Pay half now." The dirty-faced alien mechanic grumbled out. He spoke universal which was a given seeing how he worked in a space station that belonged to a sector of space well within Frieza Army territory. The station was, after all, just twelve million kilometers away from Planet Kanassa.

"Look at the smart mouth on you!" Chayote clenched her fist and raised it over the little rascal's head to threaten a hammer-arm smack that would have sent the alien's belfry crashing down to the floor and splitting his own body into two. "I'll pay!"

She continued to grumble and growl while walking away to which the mechanics just chuckled and continued to gossip about things Chayote couldn't register nor care about.

"Saiyan…" was the only word she heard.

She was that. A Saiyan. They didn't bully her any further because they saw the Frieza Army gear on her, they saw the fact that she was a Saiyan and that was enough for a start. A Frieza Army grunt wouldn't refuse payment on a space station under Lord Frieza's control. That was like snubbing the space emperor himself out on his rightful taxes. Chayote turned around before entering the hallway to the main entrance hall of the station to see the critters scraping the Planet Sando seaweed that she had stuffed into the corners where her ship's hull was compromised off. They'd have to check the fuel tank too, Chayote had stuffed down a bunch of it there, suspecting a possible leak as well as a bunch of other systems.

The stuff was surprisingly useful for a wide variety of tasks. It became steel-hard from pressure, it conducted electricity well making it ideal for basic wirework as well as being an excellent heat conductor and source of alternate fuel. Those Sandoans really knew a treasure when they settled down on it.

The Saiyan checked on the sash with the three Ultimate Dragon Balls she had collected up until now. She shook her thigh, just to feel the crystal orbs rubbing and bouncing against each other. It was just paranoia talking, after all, if even one of those buggers got missing, slipped out and rolled into some pipeline in the space station – the Earth would've been as good as done for. There was little possibility for pickpocketing in a Frieza Army space station, the space emperor ran a pretty tight ship even in the farther reaches of his territory which this sector wasn't.

Before Chayote could even begin to wonder how exactly she'd pay up for the repairs, a strangely familiar for a person she met for the first time in her life tail of blond hair flashed in her field of vision, capturing the Saiyan's attention instantly.

"A human?" she wondered. Not only was this creature parading about a match for the typical physical attributes of a human but she dressed like a stylish human youth too. A purple dress, ripped jeans and cowgirl boots, a bloated hat that looked almost like a balloon on top of her head.

The Saiyan seemed to be too encompassed by the unexpected presence of a human teen inside a faraway space station on a sector belonging to the Frieza Army to notice a shrimp, humanoid alien with blue skin apart from his purple scalp and body, donning the outfit of a Galactic Patrol too. This surely had to be a joke, the Galactic Patrol had no business to be inside Frieza Army territory while humans had no capability to travel this far and yet… Both of them were here.

"Shoot! We've been noticed…!" the purple alien leaned back and froze up in fear. "By a Saiyan warrior no less!"

"What's the matter, you keep going on and on about being Super-Elite, why don't you fend her off then?" the human girl put her hands over her hips and leaned over the cowering alien of the Galactic Patrol. These jokers were a curious faction, their ranks had warriors all over the spectrum in terms of power levels so one couldn't know what to expect from them. They used to oppose the Frieza Army and were acknowledged as pests to be exterminated on sight but the Galactic Patrol stopped opposing the Frieza Army long ago, save for select guerilla tactics interventions from its boldest and mightiest members.

"Are you kidding me!?" the purple alien freaked out. "I'm no match for an adult Saiyan warrior, don't forget she's also a part of the Frieza Army too! We can't stand out one bit here and even if we did pull off a miraculous win…"

"Hey, genius, you're sort of already standing out by wetting your pants here…" Chayote growled, seeing little to no interest in the Galactic Patrolman as opposed to the human he traveled with. "What is the Galactic Patrol even doing here?"

"Shhhh!" Jaco pressed his finger to his pristine-white teeth as he hissed out a shush at the Saiyan. "Would you mind not triggering everyone here to our presence? Plus, as if I'd disclose private Galactic Patrol business to a Frieza Army lackey such as yourself!"

The fact that he himself had just yelled out "Galatic Patrol" aloud had only occurred to the shrimp a decent space of time later after he had already said it. The skin of the purple alien went in pimples and reverberated in panic as he frantically looked around the grumpy-looking faces of aliens both humanoid and otherwise walking, slithering or levitating past the pair.

"We're looking for a nasty computer virus named "The Salad Thunderbomb", well, Jaco's looking for it, I'm just gathering material for my killer sci-fi novel. It's a pretty neat adventure, the virus has such a cool name I won't even need to think up a name for my chapter!" the blond girl exclaimed in excitement.

"She went out and said it…" Jaco shriveled into a pathetic pile of deflated rubber on sight. "Don't you understand how dangerous this mission is, Tights, everything and everyone here wants to kill us!"

"Hey, you're Galactic Patrol, aren't you?" something had occurred to Chayote.

"Would you stop saying it already!" Jaco flipped out at the Saiyan who smirked with a face of genuine apology beaming back at the purple alien.

"Huh? What's that about Galatic Patrol?" a curious voice rumbled from a tall, bubblegum colored powerhouse alien looming behind Jaco and Tights, freezing the Galactic Patrolman in his place with a frightened grit of his teeth to accentuate his panic.

"This shrimp, he's wearing a Galactic Patrol uniform and he's even packing a Galactic Patrol blaster. Nice find, Saiyan, completely gone past us…" another alien that looked like a humanoid lump of coal with a pair of eyes staring from within a pair of cracks on the front of its head lump cracked his fists with a strange, rubbery noise.

More and more attention was beginning to follow the sudden peak of interest from the two in the Galactic Patrolman. Chayote scratched the back of her head, feeling a bit bad as she was the one to make their presence known to everyone, even if everyone involved had tempted their fate once or twice before they got figured out.

"Anyway, what I was suggesting was, I'm a bit short on money so… If you can pay for the repairs of my ship, I'll kick everybody's asses until you find your whatever you're looking for." Chayote tried to put it briefly as the aliens had begun to surround and wind up their fists for a royal beatdown, some of them stood from far behind and aimed their standard Frieza Army issued arm cannons. Those would have been so useful to Chayote back on Earth. Before her Ki control became more consistent as they did the heavy-duty work of channeling Ki into beams for the wielder.

"So, what'll it be?" Chayote asked when the bubblegum powerhouse threw the first fist which froze in mid-air when Chayote's two-fingered pinch locked around his wrist and forced his fist open while the giant whined and cried out in pain. The Saiyan didn't have the chance to check up on everybody's power levels yet but they shouldn't have been too bad for her to handle. She could have used a nice test of the power she had garnered on Earth as well as the power granted to her by the Zenkai boost after the conflict with King Piccolo.

"It's not like we have a choice, is it!?" Jaco cried out while Tights turned her head and raised her nose up, looking ashamed to have this alien as her comrade.

"What's that? You're going to oppose us, Saiyan? You would betray Lord Frieza like that on his own space station!?" one of the alien crowd thundered out while Chayote turned on her scouter before going to work. She didn't want any trouble but trouble was the only way to pay up for the repairs, get off this rock and then return to looking for the Ultimate Dragon Balls.

The average of power levels seemed to be at about 1200, there were some twice as big as that but there were some that were lower than a 1000, while this made Chayote choke up a bit inside, recalling the struggle against the Saibamen back on Planet Vegeta that ended up leaving her headless for a time, the soft rub of the Frieza Army armor against her skin reminded her that she handled folks as tough as 1500 and higher with a mere couple of punches. She should have been several times that in worth and that realization blew gusto to Chayote's dashes and rampaging fists.

"She's really good!" Tights opened her mouth in surprise. "I can't even see her move until she stops moving altogether."

"Yes well… That's the threat we Super-Elites face every day in the wide universe, it says a lot about our own might, doesn't it?" Jaco smirked while pressing a tiny pimple of a bicep that popped out when he tensed his rubbery limbs.

A body pile covered Chayote up, the weight felt like absolutely nothing. With a simple flare of her aura, she sent the body pile scattering all across the hallway. The alarm of the space station had been set off, maybe she cut herself off the chain a bit too much as smalltime rabble-rousing was nothing new on space stations with the security staff involving themselves only when stuff threatened the integrity of the space station itself.

"Can you access the terminals from here?" Chayote looked at Jaco. "I've got a nasty feeling we might have company soon and we might not want to test our luck wandering the station and looking for some more dangerous officers of the Army."

"Y-Yeah…" Jaco nodded and rushed up to the table where the four-meter tall stick-shaped receptionist with six stick-like arms was before being laid out by a stiff right cross to the center of its face and laying cross-eyed. "It should do to upload the antivirus and stop this station from infecting the entire sector…"

"So, this station has been spreading some system virus? Maybe that's why I couldn't reach Dr. Brief on Planet Sando?" Chayote wondered aloud before feeling a rough yank on her collar. Tights had gripped it and pulled the Saiyan in as if she was about to kiss her on the lips but, sadly, she only almost yelled Chayote's ears off.

"You know Dr. Brief? He's my father! How do you know him?" Tights continued to shake the female Saiyan until she could swear she'd hurl up. Chayote tried to be gentle with severing the hold and putting the end to the shaking, given the recently revealed information that this young lady was Bulma's sister.

"He was the one who built me this ship. I'm not sure if you know, it depends on for how long you've been parading through the universe with this dweeb but… Your sister, Bulma… She's… She died." Chayote wasn't sure why she had so much trouble saying it. What's Bulma to her anyway? Just a useful, genius mechanic who laid the foundation for the ship she currently paraded the universe with, yes…

"W-What…?" Tights' lips quivered.

"Oh… No… Wait…" Chayote pressed her finger to the corner of her own lips as she engaged into some deeper thinking for a second. "I think she's alive now, I guess I shouldn't have stressed you out then."

"Imbecile!" Tights smacked Chayote across the head. She must have had plenty of practice smacking things that dwarfed her in power level since she didn't break her own hand while relaying the message meant to be relayed by the smack. "Why bring it up at all, if you're not sure if my little sister's done for or not!?"

The lights went out while the space station trembled in a mighty quake. This wasn't supposed to happen. Something bad sparked up deep down in Chayote's gut, she turned her scouter on and turned to the left, where the kitchen of this floor and other service rooms were, the most likely places to flood the main entrance hall with aliens looking to eat Galactic Patrolman soup for dinner. There were plenty of power levels as high as four to five thousand but they seemed to have been barred off from entering the main entrance hall by the door.

"Did you shut the door?" Chayote looked to Jaco just to make sure about something she already knew. The cowardly space policeman didn't even need to say a thing. The signature coming in from behind Chayote made her vision blank out in shock for a second. The power level of that thing just kept on going and going and going…

"5000… 8000… 12000… 18300!?" Chayote could feel her own heart freezing up. This power level could have only belonged to an elite Saiyan warrior or one of the higher-tier Frieza Army officers. Someone like that would deal with the space station security system like wet paper. Hell, even Chayote wouldn't last that long against someone like that.

The scouter's showings were just one side of the coin, the feeling of the Ki signature as massive as it was twisted sent shivers that utterly paralyzed Chayote for a second. Not to mention the army of lesser power levels surrounding the monstrous Ki signature as well as the utterly frightening sensations of even greater power levels that hadn't yet revealed themselves.

"Whatever you're doing, check the landing pad, now!" Chayote slammed her hands over the table and took a heavy gulp down.

"Whaaa! Where did this massive cruiser come from!?" Jaco scratched his head. "Oh, right, I was busy uploading the antivirus to check if anything requested permission to land…"

"Hmmm… You seemed so cool, I was even going to name the main heroine of my novel after you but… Now you kind of look like a scaredy-cat like Jaco, if you ask nicely, maybe I'll let you have an episodic role…" Tights continued to ponder on the structure and setting of her novel that she'll never have the chance to write if whatever had just landed would have their way.

"Shut up, open the door now! The door that leads to the lavatory, the kitchen and the rest of the station!" Chayote demanded.

"B-But… That's where all the Frieza Army goons are…" Jaco trembled after removing a fish-shaped drive from the service computer and putting it into a pouch of his utility belt, substituting the drive with his blaster.

"If whatever's landing there gets their hands on us – we're dead before we can even worry about anything else!" Chayote slammed her hands again, denting the table and frightening Jaco.

"F-Fine just… Work on your anger issues a little, maybe?" Jaco ran out from the service computer and prepared to open fire once the door opened up, Chayote ran out and did the same. It wouldn't be easy, nobody there had a chance to hold up a candle to her but they might just cause enough of an inconvenience to slow her down so that the massive power level and the army they came with would catch up to them.

"So that thing that frightens you so much is the Frieza Army too?" Tights wondered.

"I'm not from the Frieza Army, I'm from Earth." Chayote growled as this was neither the place nor the time. "Just shut up for a second and keep up with us, please. We can't allow whoever's on the landing pad to catch up to us."

"Heh, it must be something really scary if it frightens you. You Saiyans are real battle maniacs so I'm surprised you're not enjoying yourself right now." Jaco addressed Chayote with a joking tone.

"Just don't stop shooting…" Chayote growled.

The first wave of roughousers and miscreants became encased by the bright and all-encompassing light from Jaco's blaster shots and Chayote's Ki blasts. The explosion threw the overzealous grunts back and scattered them all across the hallway, prompting the three to dash forward, Chayote extended her hand and blasted at anything in her eyesight, using her Ki sensory to navigate her blasts and take down whomever she couldn't see while her left clutched tightly to Tights' arm and dragged the puny human alongside her. At the very least Jaco did what was expected of him.

"Where are we pushing to, exactly, you do know that this station ends with a dead-end in the security office, right?" Jaco turned to Chayote who just soured more while channeling her frustration and desperation into more intense Ki blasts to decimate the resting, eating and shopping inhabitants of the space station.

"Man, that Frieza Army sure was quick to react… I wish the Galactic Patrolmen were this efficient…" Tights sighed while being flung and carried around like bothersome luggage.

While the presence of this power level chasing after them was Chayote's worst nightmare come to life, something told the Saiyan that this was no Frieza Army vessel. Just like Tights said, there would be absolutely no way for the Frieza Army to answer to a distress signal in mere seconds after the fighting had concluded. Whoever was within this cruiser breaking through the main entrance hall doors, they were headed there before the fighting even broke out and that prospect frightened Chayote maybe even more than facing off against a high-ranking Frieza Army officer.


	80. Medamatcha and his Medas

Jaco spun and flipped about, firing off stray beams of blaster bolts at the chests of every Frieza Army member or just an alien looking to get on the army's good graces. A muscular, cerulean-skinned thumb-headed strongman raised a wrench to whack the Galactic Patrolman just as he landed on his own two feet, ready to regain some balance before unleashing his barrage of justice again.

Chayote's own Ki blast carried the poor mechanic away, ripping him through the door leading right to the command center of the station. Jaco sighed easier and checked on the drive in his utility belt before beginning to scan the area for more mooseheads to blast at.

"Okay, I think we've dodged the subject long enough…" Tights pressed her arms to her thighs with a vexed expression. "We're not getting any closer to escaping from this stupid station!"

"You'd think that these bozos would be more grateful, we've saved their station from a virus that might have frozen it in space, stolen all its data and then transmitted it to every ship that contacted it, doing the same to them…" Jaco sighed while nervously turning to the corridor through which the enemy that even a full-blooded Saiyan feared might have burst through at any time.

"What did you say?!" Chayote turned to Jaco. "That's what the virus does, why didn't you say it any sooner!?"

"Well, yeah, it begins downloading every pichi-pichi picture off the space-net onto the system until the system overloads. I've seen hard drives that bloat to dozen times their size and that are pulsing with heat over the size of the raunchiness…" Jaco scratched his cheek with a goofy smile.

"Shit!" Chayote slammed the control panel and ground her teeth. "Goddamn it!" she cursed while her Ki came out rushing forth from her body in an intense aura. She didn't even care that she was wasting energy at this point.

"What's wrong?" Jaco shook his head, curious.

"I'll have to confront the enemy… You two idiots listen and listen good. Take that drive, sneak onto their ship and jam it into anyplace you can stuff a drive into." Chayote clenched her fist and tried to settle down the butterflies that sensing the approaching enemy caused her to experience.

"Wait, what?" Tights clapped her eyelashes a pair of times.

"We need my ship! It's got the radar that can track the Ultimate Dragon Balls and three Ultimate Dragon Balls on top of that. Under no circumstances can we lose my ship. The whole Earth will be doomed if that happens." Chayote turned for the door and stretched her limbs, cracking her knuckles and testing the flexibility of her neck a couple of times.

"You did want to get out of here, didn't you?" Jaco looked at Tights and grabbed her hand, dragging her off to the elevator leading to the service floor, which they could have then used to ascend to the entryway through one of the service shafts if the map displayed on the barely functional computer panel told the truth.

Tights looked at Chayote with a worried expression, the Saiyan felt the tiny earpiece that the human gave her before Jaco dragged her away, one that stayed hidden underneath her blond hair all this time. Then, just like that, the pair disappeared. An explosion resonated at the other end of the corridor, soon filling the hallway and the room that branched off to multiple other hallways leading to several key locations aboard the station with soldiers.

The Saiyan wasn't at all surprised to see that these were no Frieza Army soldiers. They wore black, skin-tight bodysuits with white boots and chest-plates, the shoulders were protected with a design similar to the more advanced models of Saiyan armor, the ones that didn't use the large shoulder-pads. They all wore white helmets covering all of their heads but their mouths with orange visors for eyes.

They were all trash, all of them might have been equal to a Saibaman in strength except for the ugly dwarf in the middle. This guy was for real. He was the source of the crazy power level, Chayote could tell. She'd get massacred if she fought him for real, though he wouldn't be able to go wild in such a sensitive location. If he unleashed too much of his power the whole station might have gone off to hell, killing off his whole platoon and himself along with them, unless he was of a species that could breathe in space.

"Ki-ki-ki… A Saiyan…" the dwarf cackled. "Say, who's been causing the ruckus aboard this station?"

He was looking for information, not trouble. That was good, that meant that Chayote could have bought a little bit more time against him. She wasn't sure how much time Jaco would need to infect this bastard's ship with the virus and leave him stranded here but if she could waste his time by talking, that would help her survive through the ordeal.

"It's over, we got them." Chayote shrugged. "A Galactic Patrolman had boarded the station, things got pretty wild when we found out but he was alone and we were many, more importantly, we were much stronger."

"I see… Ki-ki-ki…" the dwarf cackled again. It felt infuriating to be frightened and humbled by someone of such a dumbass personality and build. A future member of the Frieza Army and an integral asset to Lord Frieza's cause reduced to cowering in front of a laughing imbecile just because his power level was several times that of hers.

"You guys aren't Frieza Army either. Who are you and what are you doing here?" Chayote took a mock step forward to try and intimidate the little bastard. She didn't see any scouters amongst them and she was absolutely sure that none of them could sense Ki, they might not have even known that she was weaker than them and by how much exactly.

"Ki-ki-ki… I am Medamatcha of Lord Slug's commanders. Right now, we don't want any trouble with the Frieza Army, Saiyan. Our priestesses have picked up traces of Namekian magic aboard this station, a great deal of it, in fact. We're looking for something that belongs to Lord Slug, if you'd help us find it, we'd be on our way." Medamatcha smirked.

He didn't intend on being this peaceful. His malicious intentions leaked out with that smile, the shrimp was a poor liar on top. The more time Chayote spent talking with this fool, the more she wanted to sabotage her own success and charge at him, she had spent so much time on Earth learning how to overcome great differences in power levels and yet the last time she fought someone with a power level greater than hers it didn't go too well. Plus, she was sure that the ratio by which Medamatcha's power surpassed hers was far greater than her odds of winning against Demon King Piccolo were.

"Namekian magic? Who's to say? Namekians don't leave their planet much this century, haven't you heard?" Chayote filtered her words through her teeth, feeling the urge to start swinging her fists swelling up.

"Well, if you don't know… Ki-ki-ki… I guess we've got no use of you anymore…" Medamatcha smirked and let his soldiers drown him out. Chayote growled and extended her hand, the blast she fired off did in a pair of Slug's soldiers but the rest opened fire on her. On top of facing a much more powerful commander, she had to still deal with the platoon that he commanded as well.

There wasn't much room to move around in, but Chayote was competing with mere blaster bolts here, the soldiers threw their guns around in each direction, trying to track the blitzing movements of their speedy Saiyan opponent. At this point, Chayote wouldn't have minded having left some of the station's inhabitants capable of defending their own station against the invading force.

The Saiyan dashed into the close range, disabling the possibility for the Slug's soldiers to use their long-range weaponry. One blow was all that most of them needed and the Saiyan plowed through the army with the utmost brutality, punching through the armor and vitals alike, breaking or removing limbs with mere kicks and breaking bodies with slams, slowing down only in between moves for a fraction of a second to calculate the best next action. The martial arts training served her well, her body was almost moving all by itself.

"If only Jaco wasn't such a pathetic wimp, if only I had known about those priestesses earlier, I could have asked him to kill those bitches while in Slug's ship…" Chayote thought to herself while leaving a caved-in face of a soldier with a vicious elbow strike. Medamatcha was a horrible commander, anyone else would have seen that leaving their soldiers to fight the Saiyan was hopeless and that they had no option of effectively fending her off. At this point, he was letting them die for his own amusement.

Oh well, Chayote was happy to oblige. Soon the only standing bodies in the administration room were the Saiyan and the armored dwarf commander of Lord Slug's forces. Chayote had never heard of a Lord Slug nor did she care. Although, given the fact that he had some crazy-powerful commanders on par with Lord Frieza's own as well as the fact that they were looking for the Dragon Balls, she should have paid them more mind.

"Why are you looking for the Ultimate Dragon Balls?" Chayote broke Medamatcha's concentration with a straighter question than she should have been able to fire off his way.

"Ultimate… Dragon Balls? So it's some different sort of Dragon Balls then?" Medamatcha smirked. "Ki-ki-ki… You must be the one who brought them onto this station, correct?

This was good, all she needed was a few more minutes, to keep the little dwarf talking but… It was as if Chayote wasn't in control of her own body, she charged at him with a left cross but the dwarf was no longer where he was supposed to. The Saiyan turned around with a cross-armed block and absorbed most of the diving kick from the shorty.

Something warm and suspiciously blood-tasting came up when Chayote hit the floor and she could feel having dented the surface a great deal. Her lungs burnt up when she drew in a breath, all of this damage was just from a blocked strike? What if she failed to react in time, what if she hadn't read the exact move that the dwarf was going to make before she even threw the first punch? Likely her spine would have been snapped like a twig and she'd been disposed of like the helpless and useless plastic gun that she was…

"Ki-ki-ki… You can fight, it seems." Medamatcha looked amused by his failure to dispose of the enemy with the first exchange of blows. "But you're quite slow, or maybe just weak altogether… Ki-ki-ki!"

"Tsk… Eat shit, shrimp!" Chayote cursed and disappeared into thin air. The wild and bulged out eyes of the green-skinned commander raced across the administration room. Purple bolts of energy appeared in his hands and he threw them around wildly, blasting at doorways and walls, careful not to inflict too much damage to the hull.

He was just shooting blasts randomly at this point. His continuous energy bullets were just a gambling attempt to hit that which he couldn't track due to his failure to sense Ki. Be as strong and fast as he may, he was tracking the whole battle just with his eyes alone and that wouldn't have done it.

Chayote threw a wayward kick to the dwarf's face. She could hear the cracking thud that was as loud as a lightning bolt. Medamatcha didn't even budge! The dwarf only smiled as if he was too dumb to even realize that he's been hit. Before he could get any bright ideas to counterattack, Chayote backflipped back to her initial location. Even though she wasn't tired at all, the humbling experience of the enemy just shrugging off her blows made her kneel to the ground.

"I bet the others will only find one Dragon Ball each but I'll bring Lord Slug all the ones you have. Ki-ki-ki… I guess I can't kill you until you've told me where you have them. I wonder if you're keeping them on your body, it would be a hassle to search all of the ships in the station…" Medamatcha wondered, revealing a possible reason why Chayote was still alive at this point.

"Too bad, maybe you shouldn't have let me kill your soldiers." Chayote stood back up and took a fighting stance.

"Oh, but it was so beautiful to look at…" Medamatcha cackled with a high-pitched voice. "Anyway, you're too fragile for me to hit you. I'll have to extract the information a different way, it seems."

The green shrimp crossed its arms in front of it and began glowing with blinding yellow gleams. Despite the intense concentration of Ki in all of his body, Chayote didn't feel his Ki swelling up at all. It wasn't like an explosive wave attack at all, despite looking like one from the first glance. In fact, it was quite possible… That he was growing weaker!

When the glowing ceased, Medamatcha and Chayote were no longer alone. The undergrown commander of Lord Slug's forces stood behind a quartet of his clones that seemed even more mindless and doltish than the original. Medamatcha licked his lips.

"Go, my little Medas, make this Saiyan give me all the information I need!" Medamatcha cackled out a command and the four Medas listened, they jumped at Chayote all at once with blinding speed and ferocity. They weren't like Medamatcha at all, they lacked any restraint or need to preserve Chayote's life that the Saiyan could have abused.

One microsecond they were standing still, the other Chayote felt her hands under a tight lock behind her back while a dull thud that nearly knocked her unconscious outright sent her crouching to the floor. The Meda that knocked her down from behind stepped over her head and pressed a fair bit. It felt just scary enough that her head would burst at any time for Chayote to feel worried, the pain was too much, she couldn't restrain screaming anymore.

"How many of these Ultimate Dragon Balls do you have?" Medamatcha wondered but Chayote had her mouth shut, figuratively, at least, in the literal sense, she was too busy screaming her lungs out from the perpetual feel of the head-splitting pain.

That wasn't the last of her troubles though. Just when Chayote thought it couldn't be any worse, she was brought back to the severity of her current situation by piercing sensations in her shoulders. Were those two, little remaining clones biting her!? When Dracula Man bit her it felt very similar, just like Dracula Man, Chayote felt her strength leaving her body at an alarming rate. This felt worse though. Dracula Man felt like he was depriving one's body of blood, it felt relieving almost. The Medas seemed to just rip the strength out with undue brutality, despite them just sucking on her Ki, like blood, it felt like being ripped to shreds and eaten alive.

"How many Dragon Balls, where are you keeping them, how are you finding them?" Medamatcha continued to bark questions while Chayote struggled and screamed but it all felt so vain and pointless. It only took one Meda sitting on her, restraining her hands and another one stepping over her head to make herself feel so hopelessly trapped…

If she spoke now, the Earth was doomed. And so, she screamed on, her own pain was the best solace that burnt away all traces of the temptation to tell this pathetic and misshapen shrimp anything of value.

More than half of her strength felt like it was already gone. Her vision was beginning to fade and the dreaded feeling of weakness took over the Saiyan's body. She was too weak again, this whole time she's trained and grew stronger, both body and soul, the edge she was meant to surpass had changed, elevated somewhat, but yet another freaky, green shrimp was about to kill her and she felt powerless to stop that… Rage was beginning to build up in Chayote's heart, she had to let it all go, it would only last a heartbeat but burning bright before going out felt more meaningful than just dying humbled and drained like some neutered animal.

"Saiyan! We've uploaded the virus, get out of there!" Jaco's voice boomed in her ear. While it did sound vague, ethereal and inspirational, the slim, noodle-armed alien was the last face she'd see inspiring her to keep on fighting in her darkest moment so it must have been real – he was speaking to her through the earpiece that Tights had handed her.

Finding a new purpose to all this rage, Chayote's screams that were beginning to fade and become muzzled echoed through the station again, but these were no screams of desperation and torment, these were the roars of a Saiyan, letting out a proud battle cry as their rage swelled up into something tangible. A last-ditch effort burst of Ki that sent the Medas flying off of her, though more shaken than hurt.

"Ki-ki-ki… What's that?" Medamatcha wondered.

Chayote didn't have much time. Just one heartbeat, that would be all the time that this exploding rage had bought her. If she was fighting this bastard to the death, she'd use it to get a couple of good licks in before the Medas overpowered her and drained her dead-dry but this time. This time she had to struggle, she had to survive at all costs so that the Earth could be saved.

"Solar Fist!" Chayote roared out, raising her hands to her head and closing her eyes. An intense beam of sunlight, just a shape that Chayote's swelling up Ki had taken, blinded both the Medas and Medamatcha while the Saiyan took off. Everything was dark and red from the alarms the sounds of which had become the new norm, and which Chayote could barely even hear anymore due to that fact. Like a wild, chased animal she fled on sheer instinct, no forethought, the next time she took a breath was when she gripped the handle of Dr. Brief's ship and planted her kicked rear on the cushion. Mashing through the buttons to get her out of here and as far away as possible.

By all means, she should have blasted this station from outside. Left that disgusting shrimp wheezing for air in the cold vacuum of space but… No. This wouldn't be the way that he'd die in. He'd be left stranded on this station until his superiors picked him up, he'd have to admit that he was beaten by a Saiyan one-third of his strength and he'd have to suffer the consequences and, if Lord Slug still felt merciful, Chayote would bash his brains in when they next met.

More importantly, who the hell was Lord Slug and why was he looking for the Dragon Balls!?


	81. Fake Namek, Real Nicro

"You still haven't told us your name, now that I think of it. Anyway… You kind of remind me of me, you know. You're a Saiyan from the Frieza Army that's ended up on Earth and instead of killing everyone chose to help the people out. Sister, I really feel that. I wanted to drop an Extinction Bomb on humanity when I first landed too. Too much trouble, couldn't be bothered with that…" Jaco kept on babbling on the communications.

Had Chayote the know-how of how he even patched himself up on her communicators, she'd kick him right out of it but he just kind of connected to her out of nowhere and now her precious silence was filled with his vocal buffoonery. At least the Earthling could keep her trap shut, something that was surprising, knowing who her sister was.

"My name is Chayote. Now shut up, you're getting in the way of my training." Chayote replied, she wondered for a blink if Jaco and Tights could hear her if she just spoke out loud in her ship but Jaco wouldn't let her stay curious for too long.

"Training? You've got training gear onboard? Oh… I mean… Of course, you'd have some weights and maybe even a yoga mat… You've been on Earth, right? No way you didn't pick up yoga, that's one of two things that humanity should never become extinct for. Food and yoga." Jaco went on.

"What are you talking about, Jaco? You only eat milk and cheese anyway…" Tights finally cut into the conversation though Chayote really wanted it to be so that she wouldn't have.

"That's because it's closest to what I eat back home. That being said, Earthlings have the best food at least in their galaxy. This milk and cheese stuff… Wow!" Jaco explained something that nobody really wanted him to explain.

"Do you have a yoga mat? This ship is so lame and I could use some light stretching. I'd even walk through space to get on your ship… If I know my father, he made the ship have a bunch of useless features." Tights sighed.

The girl may have been right. Dr. Brief was that sort of a genius inventor, capable of unmatched breakthroughs for his species though always bogged down by meaningless junk he chose to stuff his amazing inventions with. That was why Chayote preferred Bulma, the young lady was just as smart, naturally slower but more aware of what the necessities were, which made her actually a more efficient inventor at the end of the day.

"I do not have a yoga mat and I haven't really tested anything your father installed. Except for the fridge, I suppose. That has come in handy. I train using image training, it's an Earthling method of training where you visualize your training and unite the soul and the body, essentially living through training you're not actually going through, making you stronger in the process." Chayote explained just so she could avoid the follow-up tirade of questions about what she meant with Jaco interrupting her training and so on.

"Oh… That's a unique method. I like to train watching action movies, in fact, it's one of my three hobbies!" Jaco sounded quite proud of his dumbass training method.

"That must be why you're so puny…" Chayote grumped back at him, dealing with the fact that she wouldn't get any training done with Lord Slug and his commander goons still looking for the same thing that she was looking for. Something needed to be done about him and his priestess bitches that ratted out where the Dragon Balls were. His commanders were far too powerful to confront. No amount of skill could have compensated a difference in power that drastic.

"That's so mean!" Jaco yelled out. "I'll have you know that I am an excellent, Super-Elite Galactic Patrolman, in fact, bringing justice is the second one of my hobbies!"

"Ultimate Dragon Ball detected! Ultimate Dragon Ball detected!"

"What was that?" Jaco wondered.

"We're landing on this planet. Shut the hell up and follow me, or don't, I don't care…" Chayote grumbled out while her spaceship halted to observe the next planet she'd be landing on. It was a bleak, sand-colored space marble with large cloud layers on top.

"What are you doing? Why aren't you landing?" Jaco wondered.

"I'm trying to have the ship download some intel on the planet before I land." Chayote replied.

"But the nearest space-station is still the one that the Lord Slug's commander raided," Jaco said.

It was a fair point. Chayote did care a little if he would follow her or not, truth be told. He might not have been much help in battle, being of lesser power level than most Frieza Army soldiers, but he was still an extra pair of hands and sometimes he did have a bright idea or two.

"What do you say, Tights? Do we help Chayote or not? Frankly, I'd rather bring some more justice…" Jaco spoke with a faked disinterest.

"No way! This is perfect! Collecting seven magical orbs throughout the universe is just the kind of adventure my sci-fi novel needs and the mixture of magic and sci-fi is something that's never been done before! Mysticism meets science, I can almost feel the warmth of the printed page already!" Tights cried out in enthusiasm and Jaco's ship followed not too far away from Chayote.

"I know this planet, it's Planet Nicro!" Jaco pointed out while the two ships struggled against the pains of entering a foreign atmosphere and floated in the hot, desert skies of the planet hosting the Dragon Ball. "This won't be fun at all, I might just need to employ my third hobby – explosions!"

"What do you know about these Nicronians?" Chayote wondered. There was something useful to be gained from Jaco accompanying her after all, barring the constant stroke-inducing banter he engaged in on the communication line.

"They're a relatively weak alien species that is capable of reading minds and creating illusions. They use their long tongues to lick moss off of rocks and to scrape out shellfish flesh out of the shells." Jaco said.

"Shellfish? This place looks like a dump though…" Chayote noted the sandy surface of the planet that, judging from its external look, expanded all throughout the space rock.

"Nicronian shellfish lurk in dried out riverbeds, waiting for a flood to fill them up. They also feed on the moss though theirs forms inside their own shells." Jaco pointed out.

Chayote let the spaceship float over the skies a little bit to approach closer to the location of the Ultimate Dragon Ball. She stopped just when the signal was becoming the strongest. Back on Planet Sando she basically floated right over the Dragon Ball with this kind of signal and just needed to dive down and get it though this time she wouldn't have the third dimension to dive down through so the ball might have been a little bit further, either way, it wouldn't be this hard to find in desert so dry it made one's mouth feel like they've just eaten toilet paper.

"The Dragon Ball is right down there. It must be inside one of those shells…" Chayote pointed at the two massive, protective outer layer of the local fauna. It was odd to see that the shells weren't located in a dried-out riverbed though the shellfish might have just gotten curious and wandered off.

"Wow, look there! It's an oasis!" Tights pointed at a distance emerald wonder. "So beautiful!"

"That's odd, there are no oases in Planet Nicro…" Jaco stroke his chin. "I'd reckon that we have fallen into the range of a Nicronian and they've attacked us with illusions. In that case, I wouldn't drink any of that water, if I were you, Tights."

"Hmph… A bunch of wimps, attacking invaders of their planet with visions of oases, what dumbasses!" Chayote grumbled while ordering her ship to land at once. "We could use one of them to scoop out those shells. I'm betting that the Ultimate Dragon Ball is in there."

Chayote jumped out of the spaceship, Jaco's ship was not too far behind to land and the pair of the Galactic Patrolman and the ditzy Earthling author wanna-be hopped out at once. Tights looked rather disinterested in the shellfish if a little freaked out by their size whereas Jaco had one hand on his blaster the whole time. There was something in the air that he didn't like.

"These shellfish have a decent Ki signature…" Chayote pointed out, approaching the pair and kicking one on the side while she walked away and began examining them from all directions, hoping that if the Ultimate Dragon Ball was inside, it would gleam orange for her in the Nicronian sunlight.

"Whaaa, Chayote!" Jaco's yell made the Saiyan jump up and turn toward the shellfish that had its tongue wrapped around Jaco. Chayote shook her head, trying to shake off the illusion that she might have been under.

"Heh! It's no use, let me help it for you though…" a pinkish-orange alien mocked Chayote while the appearance of shellfish began shaking and evaporating away like a dispersing mirage, leaving only a tall, humanoid of a thick chest shell and weak-looking arms as well as a rectangular head with a mohawk-like bone protrusion at the top and a pair of spikes to the sides. The Nicronians had pointy ears and protruded, beady, yellow eyes sunken into a layer of stringy, purple flesh that really stood out in the unremarkable pink design of the creature.

"So more people have come for that Namekian orb, just like you've guessed they would, Raichi!" the taller Nicronian of a deeper shade of pink chuckled at his comrade that still gripped Jaco in one hand.

"That orb is a real godsend, we'd have never known the sweet taste of brains had it never landed on our planet and attracted a whole suite of tourists!" the Nicronian named Raichi smirked to himself while his tongue extended even further and lingered by the side of Jaco's bodysuit, where the ears of the alien would have been.

"So this is how Nicronians look like? Butt-ugly!" Tights pinched her nose and showed her tongue, half turning her head away from the scene of the developing hostage scenario.

"So you know of the Dragon Ball then? Hand it over and maybe I'll let you keep the Galactic Patrolman…" Chayote suggested to the Nicronian that began licking at the plastic of Jaco's earpieces bit by bit.

"Yeah, we know about the Namekian magic orbs, we've seen a few when we visited the place some time ago on an intergalactic student exchange program. We couldn't care about them really but it does attract a whole bunch of weird species that we can eat the brains of. It's like an intergalactic gourmet menu down these parts lately." The non-Raichi Nicronian laughed out, looking impatient to eat something's brains.

"That's so unusual! Nicronians aren't categorized as a dangerous species. You two are a bad seed of your entire species!" Jaco accused his captors. Whether he was incredibly brave, which was unlikely, or too thick to realize the deadly danger looming over his head, which was much more likely, Jaco appeared to be quite brave while confronting his death.

"Zakuro, this little guy seems pretty dumb, his brains may not be all that tasty, capture the females, why won't you?" Raichi suggested before Tights twirled and turned around on one foot before striking a heroic pose in front of the two very confused aliens.

"You two have gotten into a mess of trouble, you see, Chayote here is a Saiyan of the Frieza Army, she's really tough too and even if you do eat her brains – the entire Frieza Army will bomb your pitiful rock into non-existence!" Tights threatened the pair of Nicronian mutants with an acquired taste for brains.

"A… A Saiyan!?" Raichi trembled, the loose of his tongue around Jaco's throat loosened a bit. "That's not good…"

"So what you're saying is that if we kill this girly here, a whole army of goons will land here and feed us their brains too!? I can hardly wait!" Zakuro clapped and rubbed his hands together with a malicious smile. "Hey, Raichi, how about we steal their spaceship too and go fly around the universe, gobbling a whole bunch of brains on our way?"

"Y-Yeah…" Raichi got a bit bolder after imagining the entire universe dreading the two Nicronians, falling ill to their illusions before their tongues finished them off and fed on some succulent brains. "Starting with this pathetic fool right here!"

Tights' eye twitched when Raichi's tongue slipped underneath Jaco's bodysuit and entered into his ear but before it could penetrate his skull and get right to the sweet and juicy part – it slipped out and sent the pink alien reeling back and spitting out as he rubbed his tongue as it had just come into contact with boiling acid.

"What's wrong? Is his brain that small or bland?" Zakuro wondered.

"No! Disgusting, bitter, so bitter!" Raichi yelled and screamed out into the air as if his tongue had just touched something that it could not un-touch as long as the Nicronian lived. "Clean your damn ears sometimes, you filthy animal!"

Jaco laughed out proudly while pressing his fists to his hips and looking up into a blank point in space, trying to pose for a poster of a superhero movie, apparently, "A true hero of justice never removes his bodysuit, for the work of a bringing people justice is never done and bringing justice is my No. 1 hobby!" he declared.

"Plan B!" Zakuro declared after growling. Chayote felt something ethereal hit her head pretty hard as if her blood pressure had multiplied a dozen times and threatened to knock her out. The Saiyan persevered and regained her balance only to open her eyes and see four Jaco standing in front of her.

"Whaaa! Everybody's like me!" one Jaco declared, frightened by the predicament.

"Shut up, you're not the real me, I'm the real me!" Jaco shook his fist at the first one.

"I'm really confused…" third Jaco scratched his head.

"Huh… Why did my chest turn flat all of a sudden?" the fourth Jaco wondered and slapped at its chest. Chayote immediately ruled that Jaco to be Tights. The wanna-be author was too ditzy and straightforward to not react in such a direct manner and, luckily for her, nobody else wanted to try and impersonate her.

"Hey, Jaco," Chayote smirked. She knew that the Nicronians put up this charade to fool her and give them time to eat up Tights' brain at the very least before making their getaway, they just tried to make it look natural, without breaking their faux appearances. "I forgot, what's your third favorite hobby?"

"Huh? Like my third one?" one of the Jaco's pressed a finger to his lips.

"I wouldn't know, it's hard to say, I mean… Who even numbers their hobbies in terms of favoritism, I mean, apart from the very favorite, what's even the point of such a thing, right?" the second one shrugged, trying to look innocent.

"It's explosions!" the third Jaco raised his fist up and declared with valiance as if he had just spoken something meaningful. Truthfully, he did say a meaningful thing though it was not something profoundly deep or something that would end up on a T-shirt, though Chayote counted on something stupid like that being muttered in the first place.

The Saiyan blitzed the weakling Nicronians and knocked each one of them out with one strike each. Jaco jumped up and rushed to the trunk of his spaceship, removing a pair of gadgets that looked similar to Earthling headphones, except they had a coil of steel wire wrapped over them that had a bright flash of electrical impulses running from one side to the other.

"These are neural inhibitors, meant to subdue the mental abilities of most alien species capable of such a thing." Jaco pointed out and placed them onto the subdued pair before running back and pulling out a few loops of rope to tie them up. "This is a rope, it is useful for subduing defeated villains!"

"I know what a rope is, you imbecile!" Chayote flipped out at the Galactic Patrolman who began tying up the beaten Nicronians with a sweaty face. He looked real proud of himself after finishing it too.

"Bringing justice is my No. 1 favorite thing. I know of a perfect planet to drop these two fools to. The planet is surrounded by an intense fog of stellar winds that makes escape near-impossible unless the winds subside. It's a real nasty piece of work of a planet too, nobody in their right mind would ever even get lost there!" Jaco laughed out, feeling quite intelligent for having come up with such a method for punishing the bad seed evildoers.

"Why don't you just kill them? I could snap their necks right now, I attacked them to kill, frankly, I'm surprised they survived the hit…" Chayote wondered.

"You can't just go around killing people, that's not the Galactic Patrolman way! Normally, I would bring them in to the Galactic Prison but these two are too dangerous because of their mental powers. It's best that we just strand them elsewhere, where they can't give their folks any bad ideas about attacking passing by tourists and eating their brains…" Jaco looked at the subdued pair and loaded them onto his spaceship at the back. "Tights will have to share a ship with Chayote for now though, just until we drop these off…"

"Tsk…" Chayote expressed her annoyance, "Fine, as long as it's not too far off of our path to the next Dragon Ball." She mumbled while picking up the fallen Ultimate Dragon Ball that Raichi had dropped after being dispatched of.

"Yay! Yoga!" Tights shot her fist out into the sky with a spry hop.


	82. Slug's Big Break

"Say, Chayote, if you're not from the Frieza Army, how come you're wearing the Frieza Army gear?" Jaco inquired over the social link which the Saiyan found no way of shutting down. By now she was already used to her mental image training being continuously interrupted leaving her little to no time of getting any training done.

"It's because I've beaten a pair of Frieza Army scouts on the edge of Lord Frieza's empire space. I took their gear because it is what I've been trained to use since birth. I've come to tolerate and somewhat like Earthling clothing too though. It's dysfunctional and soft but it looks cool." Chayote replied with a grumpy voice but a slow and steady tone.

"You didn't take the arm-cannon though, why?" Jaco wondered. Chayote looked at the top of the illuminator of her ship to see Jaco toying with his gun, flicking it from his holster into his hand without even touching it.

"I don't need that sort of tech anymore. I've learned to manipulate and channel Ki on Earth without such primitive technology. Channeling Ki yourself is by far the superior method, it allows you to control how much Ki you're channeling and the shape of the energy, there's just no comparison." Chayote shrugged. "How are you doing that?"

"Oh… I pee through my forehead…" Jaco holstered his gun and pointed at his forehead that sprouted a few drops from time to time that entered into a small opening on the ship's operating panel and drooped down into the waste processing container of Jaco's ship. "I can't pee that much on command though, I've already peed earlier, you see…"

"That's not what I was referring to!" Chayote roared out, jumping off of her chair and shaking her fist at the screen. "How are you making the gun pop into your hand like that? Is it magnetic, or something?"

"Oh, these are the tricks of the trade of a Galactic Patrolman Super-Elite!" Jaco chuckled, looking quite proud of himself now that a bona fide Saiyan warrior has taken note of his abilities. "My mind has been so honed by countless action movies that it can move small objects without the need of my touch, you see!"

"Oh, sort of like Chiaotzu then…" Chayote noted and juggled one sash with a handful of Senzu with the sash containing the four Ultimate Dragon Balls she had collected so far. "Chiaotzu's ability is far stronger though, he can restrain powerful martial artists."

"Tsk… I do regret not dropping that Extinction Bomb now!" Jaco ground his teeth with his face looking bluer than usual, this time – of jealousy.

"Don't even think about it, shrimp." Chayote growled like a sleepy and lazy lioness, juggling the sashes while looking at the screen while her ship breezed through space on auto-pilot. "I didn't go all across the universe on a wild goose chase just to have humanity eradicated by some space-ranger dweeb."

"Wow, you're really protective over those Earthlings, huh? It's not how I've always imagined Saiyans to behave…" Jaco pointed out. "You guys are the go-to grunts in most action movies, after all."

"Seeing how I've got no chance of getting any training done anyway, can I talk to Tights for a second? I've really never expected to find out that Bulma had an older sister…" Chayote wondered before catching both of the sashes and depositing them to a ribbon tied under her Saiyan armor, a remnant of the warrior's uniform from Planet Beiko.

"Tights is taking a nap. I guess you might say it's her Favorite Hobby No. 2…" Jaco posed in front of the screen making Chayote sigh in disappointment.

"A Saiyan warrior refused her direct command because this loser can't be bothered to wake an Earthling woman up from her nap… Has Earth made me this soft?" Chayote wondered mumbling to herself before the ship's computer began croaking with the notable alert of the Ultimate Dragon Ball being in the nearest vicinity that would have woken anybody up from their deepest of slumbers.

"Fifth Dragon Ball, huh? Full speed ahead then…" Chayote pushed the lever on her side and forced her ship to blast on ahead to the location of the Ultimate Dragon Ball. While, for the most part, the ship allowed itself to be controlled through an auto-pilot, Chayote could have regulated the speed at which she got to the location.

A bright beam of light formed far across from the tip of Chayote's spaceship with the light merging into a massive, fuzzy orb that enlightened the tunnel of darkness and compensated somewhat for the disappeared stars that were doomed by some guy named Doppler to fail to keep up with the soaring spaceships. The intense sphere of cosmic microwave radiation changed colors a few times before the two ships halted both at once, floating in front of a metallic, planet-sized cruiser.

* * *

"Lord Slug… Two ships appear to have jumped right in front of us." An elegant and handsome alien of sky-blue skin bowed before his senile emperor, wrapped in clothing that might have just carried more bulk than the armored Namekian himself.

"What? Are they Frieza Army ships?" Slug straightened his back, very few matters warranted a display of liveliness by the ancient Namekian emperor.

"It does not appear so, no, one of the ships has a Galactic Patrol emblem on it. Except for the Extinction Bomb that it is likely to be equipped with, it is of no threat to our cruiser. The second one is a mystery. It appears to be a mesh of Saiyan, Frieza Army technology but it is not a standard Frieza Army ship." The sky-blue commander of Lord Slug's forces reported.

"The Galactic Patrol? Hmmm… They must be escorting whoever is in that other ship, or something. I don't think that we need that kind of attention yet. If they attack us – blow them up, otherwise, let them flee in terror." The withered and cracked lips of Lord Slug smiled as she let out a weak and crusty chuckle from his dried out lungs. Even such an elementary stimulation to his moistureless lungs forced the old Namekian to cough up emerald secretions from somewhere deep down that stained his white gloves.

"B-But, Sir… Lord Slug…" the sky-blue commander began to sweat.

"Speak up, Angila, what is it?" Lord Slug focused his eyes on his subordinate, there were only two occasions when a commander of his got this worked up – when they have failed to accomplish something that their master had asked them to do, which usually warranted a quick death, or when they were worried over the well-being of their overlord. It was something worrying nevertheless.

"The priestesses had gone wild. They scream out about a massive influx of Namekian magic in one of those ships. It is more than likely that it has more than one Dragon Ball on them." Angila scratched the back of his head.

So it was indeed that the commander was worried if Slug's weak, old body could even handle such exciting news. Lord Slug jumped up on his two feet and began roaring in maniacal laughter as he had not done for centuries. The old man's body seemed overcome with faux vitality that allowed him to riot in excitement.

"What luck, it must be that bothersome pest with the incredibly accurate Dragon Radar. They've stumbled onto the energy signature of our Dragon Balls by sheer chance! Or maybe… Since we have three Dragon Balls already… No… This would be just too perfect!" Lord Slug slouched over and extended one of his hands against his throne while his other hand grabbed his chest, the ancient Namekian began wheezing but then managed his acting up age and rested in his throne. "Sack the ships, take the Dragon Balls. Keep the commanders of the crew alive for interrogation. We need to find out why there are Dragon Balls scattered throughout the entire Universe now and how they've managed to track them."

"Do not worry, Lord Slug, the priestesses have locked the ships in place through Psychokinesis and they'll board them forcefully. Commander Zeeun and Medamatcha have already left to deal with the crew." Angila bowed before Lord Slug, feeling glad that Slug's clan of commanders have had enough insight to do this much.

"Perhaps sparing Medamatcha's life was the right call, after all. There are few as skilled at extracting information as him…" Lord Slug chuckled in a much more reserved manner now that he had the condition of his body in mind.

"Indeed, it was incredibly insightful of you, Lord Slug!" Angila bowed again. "I shall tend to the matter as well if you will excuse me."

"Go… I swear, if the remaining four Dragon Balls have fallen into our hands by chance, my old heart might not contain such excitement…" Lord Slug couldn't remove the smirk off his face when Angila and his small party of accompanying soldiers left his throne room.

* * *

"Shit! We're locked in place! The thrusters won't work!" Jaco kept flipping through switches and handles. "We're moving at a turtle's pace and we're moving toward this cruiser. "Damn it, the Traction Beam technology is reserved only for Galactic Patrol vessels! That's twelve hundred years in Galactic Prison!"

"This cruiser…" Chayote stared at the ship, looking far calmer than her Galactic Patrolman comrade. "It's not one of the Frieza Army, who on Earth would have these sort of resources to build something like this?"

"Some good-for-nothing crook that's about to find out the sternness of the fist of Galactic Patrolman's justice, that's who!" Jaco posed a couple of times before the screen and swooped the blaster out of his holster again, aiming it at the door of his ship. "How can Tights be sleeping through all this, honestly…"

"Maybe it's for the better that she's asleep," Chayote smirked. "She won't get in our way."

"That's mean!" Jaco exclaimed. "Honestly, if we don't make it, I want you to know that you need to work on that attitude, it's all either rage or meanness and I, frankly, am not a fan!"

Chayote was about to snap back at the clad in bodysuit humanoid alien but then she realized that she would only serve to prove him right. He was right though, something had been really annoying Chayote a great deal lately. She never remembered herself being prone to fits of uncontrollable rage at any point in her life except when fighting. That was before she learned martial arts, however, she used to just turn off, let go and swing her limbs about. More and more she found herself picking fights that weren't strictly necessary, more and more she found herself swinging her limbs about wildly just like the days before martial arts too.

It all started when she left Earth, right after recovering from the fight against Demon King Piccolo. A few theories were shuffling through Chayote's mind at that moment: perhaps it was her booming rise in power that elevated the working of her Saiyan genes to the point where she could no longer feel responsible for her behavior anymore, maybe it was her first transformation into the Great Ape that had flipped that switch and left her half wildling, half whatever she used to be before. All of those theories vanished like thin smoke when she saw that ugly, pudgy, green mug with blown-out eyes staring back at her.

"Ki-ki-ki! Well, what do you know, it's that Saiyan!" Medamatcha pointed at Chayote's ship after the two ships got scooped up into an opening inside the cruiser and the hatch of her spaceship began clanging wildly as if some supernatural force was trying to peel it open.

"Her!? Are you sure, Medamatcha?" another alien, a towering powerhouse of orange skin and belts extending all over his body turned to his little companion. This lump of flesh had an even larger power level than the dwarf. Chayote would have been frightened, she should have been frightened but something different was swelling up deep down that wasn't fear.

"Chayote, it's those guys from the station! Look at this landing zone, it's full of ships like the one in the station." Jaco pointed out, pointing the barrel of his blaster at every identifiable design he could see. "Chayote…?"

"YOU…!" Chayote's roar found the tiniest spaces to escape her ship and freeze the platoon of Lord Slug's army soldiers in their boots. While there were no survivors to tell the tale of the rampage of this young Saiyan woman, the fact that commander Medamatcha was the lone survivor of the meeting with the Saiyan did not escape being the object of rumors amongst the squads of other commanders as well.

The psychokinetic grip that tried to open Chayote's ship felt the struggle that it had to go through fade away, the door burst open by itself via a powerful push kick when a furious Saiyan warrior burst out and charged through the opened hatch, her eyes whited out and nets of popping veins spread out from the edges of her face all the way to the center while the intensity of her fury had twisted her cute face into an expression of absolute death-bringing.

Everything was blood-red, the next instance that Chayote could feel in control of her own body again was when she saw the bulky, orange alien stepping in to block her attack. Behind her was just a trail of blazing steel that had bent out of shape and burnt to a black crisp where Chayote had dashed from her own ship at the enemy, wishing bloody-murder upon them. Handfuls of soldiers had flown to each direction where they got in her way, the survivors had stepped aside willingly, letting their vastly more powerful commanders take charge.

"This is the Saiyan woman that escaped you, Medamatcha?" Commander Zeeun turned to his pocket-sized comrade with a mocking grin as he clutched Chayote's fist firmly in his oversized hand. "I can barely feel a push from her, just another Saiyan dog, all bark and no bite!"

A strong push toward the alien powerhouse drove all balance out of Chayote's body, everything went white again. By the time that the downed Saiyan realized that she had to peel her face off the metallic floor of the planet-sized cruiser's landing hull, the left side of her face felt numb and pulsing with pain while the only feeling that the Saiyan could identify in it was the taste of blood from her shaken teeth in that side of her face.

"How about we break this Saiyan a little for defying Lord Slug's wishes? I'm sure you're just itching for your revenge, huh, Medamatcha?" Commander Zeeun cracked his knuckles and looked at his cackling comrade.

"Ki-ki-ki… Yeah, she robbed my Medas of a good draining. She has information about the Dragon Balls and a way to track them. That's why I had to fool around with her back then so she got the jump on me…" Medamatcha rubbed his popped out eyes with the back of his hand, like a sniffling toddler that was about to burst into tears.

"Well then, with the priestesses having locked her ship in place, she's not going anywhere now. You can drain her all you want." Commander Zeeun wrapped his arms over his chest.

"That won't do… Ki-ki-ki…" Medamatcha cackled. "I'll have to break her a little for that embarrassment earlier!"

The undergrown alien charged at Chayote with a knee strike. The Saiyan put up her arms, she relaxed her body and let the influx of force to throw her spinning backward instead of flat out breaking her arms. By now she knew that she was overpowered by either one of those two brutes but she simply had no other choice here. She had much more success when she didn't focus on how hopeless her situation was and just fought on.

Chayote threw a double ax-barrel slam that connected to Medamatcha's head but the force of impact only seemed to make the Saiyan cry out in pain when it reflected through the bones of her own wrists while the alien just twitched and shook a little, feeling little to no pain from a successful attack that would have smashed King Piccolo himself to a bloody stain in one blow.

Chayote didn't give in to the pain, she didn't give in to the fear or the rising feeling of dread that threatened to close the iron-tight clutch around her throat and press until it was done. The Saiyan roared and let fury take hold of her again, that way she wouldn't feel the pain that striking this little beast caused her, that way she'd be more unpredictable, that way she'd fight with pure murderous instinct bolstered by years of experience in martial arts – a craft that was as alien to these creatures as they would have been on Earth.

"Hey, hey…" Commander Zeeun's smile turned bitter when he saw Chayote sieging Medamatcha's defenses with relative success up in the air. The final cross that connected to the abdomen of the cackling demonling gleamed with rampant green energy, just when Medamatcha extended his arms to strike back, the force of the Ki blast took him away and detonated across the landing hull, taking most of the Lord Slug soldiers with the dwarf.

"Lima Spear!" Chayote roared out before her whited out eyes turned back to normal and the weariness, the fear of absolute death and the despair of being cornered with no hopes for escape or survival, the disappointment in her own strength and failure in protecting the Earth all came rushing back to her at once.

"Yeah, that's right! That's what you get, standing in the way of a Super-Elite Galactic Patrolman and his Deputy!" Jaco rolled out from his ship, aiming his gun like a madman at every surviving soldier and Commander Zeeun as well, now that he was emboldened by Chayote's relative success in dispatching of one of Lord Slug's commanders.

"Ki-ki-ki… Now you've gone and done it, Saiyan…" Medamatcha walked out from the smoke, his Lord Slug armor had been blown off but the pudgy, swamp-green dwarf himself was relatively unharmed by the strongest and the most brutal of Chayote's attacks. Whatever fear for her life the Saiyan felt before, it now escalated tenfold. "You've made me mad…"

"Stop fooling around, Medamatcha. Lest you let her outwit you and escape you again…" Commander Zeeun warned his comrade before lowering his hands, then putting them back up and cracking his knuckles in a menacing declaration that he decided to join in on this battle. "Lord Slug would not forgive such a transgression again."

Medamatcha extended his hands outward, a full-power energy wave beamed at Chayote but the Saiyan managed to avoid it with a hi-speed dash to the side. As expected these drones were nothing but brute strength, they lacked the experience or fighting wits to set such a devastating attack up but the lacking explosion from the blast intimidated the Saiyan more than the attack itself – the energy wave itself was a set-up.

It didn't feel like anything at all, in the beginning. Just a burst of purple and white light from behind her and the feeling of flying at hi-speed in a direction that Chayote couldn't recall telling herself to move. It was only when she regained the feeling in her upper body, that is to say, felt the resounding impulse of pain resonating throughout from her abdomen to her brain with the intensity that threatened to short the latter out entirely, that the Saiyan realized that Zeeun had attacked her from behind.

What a nasty feeling, everything above her waist hurt beyond compare but the bottom of her body might not have been there at all. It was, however. Lying flat on the ground, gasping for every bit of air and whimpering in pain, Chayote could see her sprawled out legs positioned in a weird bend but she lacked the feeling below the waist to change them.

"Ch-Chayote!" Jaco cried out. One of his hands still clutched the blaster while the other one just twitched and tried to reach out for the Saiyan, whether to move her closer to him with his weak-sauce telekinetic abilities or to ease her transition into her peril, that much Chayote was in too much discomfort to tell.

"Z-Zeeun, did you really need to use your head for this?" Medamatcha whined out with a pathetic shriek.

"Don't lose your cool, I might have broken her back but I left her alive. You can have all the payback you want once she's immobile, that's the only kind of enemy we can entrust to you, it seems…" Zeeun wrapped his arms over his chest before turning his attention to the Galactic Patrolman. "So… What are you waiting for? Scram…" Zeeun smirked.

"That's right, Lord Slug will gain several Dragon Balls from this Saiyan as well as her precise Dragon Radar. When so much joy just happens to fall into Lord Slug's hands, he tends to feel merciful and we don't really need the Galactic Patrol sticking their tiny sticks in our wheels anyway, ki-ki-ki!" Medamatcha cackled.

"Okay then… I see you guys have the Saiyan threat well-handled here… Heh, heh…" Jaco rubbed the back of his head and holstered his blaster, bowing a few times as he sat back into his ship. "Well then… I guess we'll be going… Be careful, don't fly into the red lights, those are nova flares, they'll microwave your ship and leave you floating helplessly in space…"

Jaco kept on switching between bowing and posing like a heroic patrolman telling kids to look both ways before crossing the street as he boarded his ship. The Psychokinesis from the priestesses aboard the ship still held his vessel in place but none of Lord Slug's commanders doubted it for a second that the cowardly space patrol would flee for his life the moment that the priestesses lower their psychokinetic hold on the two ships.

"Ki-ki-ki, now, where were we!?" Medamatcha turned his attention to defenseless Chayote as he approached her.

"Be careful, you were the one to insist we need her alive, after all…" Zeeun sighed and sat on a pile of dead soldiers while watching his overly-excited comrade kicking, scratching and striking the crippled Saiyan with hammer-fist strikes for his own amusement.

"Ki-ki-ki…" Medamatcha chuckled to himself, looking upon the swollen and bruised opponent of his while he crossed his arms in front of him and let out a gleam of golden light, revealing his Medas again. "I'm sure you haven't forgotten my Medas yet? Well, I'll have fun sucking you dry until you've got just an ounce of life again until we nurse you back to health only to drain you dry again… I'd have killed you quickly if you told me about the Dragon Balls before but now you've made me mad! I won't ever, ever, ever let you die now, no matter how much you ask for that!"

The breeze of poorly warmed landing hull chilled Chayote to the bone when the Medas ripped off her bent out of shape and bruised Saiyan armor and the cold remnants of space provided a deathly chill on her bruises that only irritated the wounds that had somewhat settled down before. Chayote knew that she'd have long since passed out had she not been burning up with the need to break out, claw and bite her way out of this ship with the Dragon Balls in hand.

As the sadistic Medas fed on her Ki, all pouncing on her and digging in, that desperate need was the only thing that didn't leave her.


	83. Escape of the Hysterical One

Whenever Chayote thought she was awake and conscious, it was difficult to say if she was blind or if the room was just sunken in darkness. There was no smell, everything inside had been isolated from any type of feeling, no cold, no heat. Not even the blood that she spilled felt like anything nor did it smell of blood. Whenever the Saiyan tried to recall something of value, she could only reach crippling flashes of lightning combined with the ugly mugs of her torturers.

She didn't recall any of those soldier types torturing her, each source of her torment had a distinctive look to them. One of them was a massive blob of orange flesh and spikes, another one was a more elegant, blue-skinned fellow with an affinity for loose, old clothing, Commander Zeeun, and Medamatcha also gone through their turns, Medamatcha most of all.

It wasn't like Chayote was complaining about being perpetually battered and broken to an inch of her life for whoever knew how long now but she failed to see the point of that activity. The first thing those demon spawns did was rid her of all possessions. Both of the sashes she had by her side were placed on the nearby plastic table with the larger one being freed of the Dragon Balls with black stars on them.

Whoever that Lord Slug guy was, he had all seven Dragon Balls but he didn't use them. Chayote would have recalled him using something like the Dragon Balls, she'd have certainly felt the colossal Ultimate Eternal Dragon ripping this planetary cruiser a new hole and making it a deadweight floater in the empty vastness of space. Then again, maybe that was exactly why Slug's crew didn't use them, maybe they waited for some destination to use them? Which destination would that be?

For how long has she been tortured here? It felt like her whole life, maybe weeks or months, who knew, maybe mere minutes that those demon scumbags made feel like years. If it truly was years and the Earth was gone before even realizing that Chayote had screwed up her mission, there would have been no way for the Saiyan to hear or otherwise feel the results of her failure.

The sashes… Thoughts were getting blurry, it was beyond just tough to concentrate as random flashes of painful memories peeled through Chayote's brain from its center at random intervals, but… Those Lord Slug commanders have placed the sashes nearby, they were so excited about emptying the one with the Dragon Balls that they've lost any desire of doing anything else that day. Back then, Chayote recalled tuning in and out, she could only barely recall the faint, orange gleams from the crystal orbs and the ugly mugs that reflected off of them.

The sashes, why did Chayote's mind keep on returning to them? What was she thinking about them and when? Something about them felt interesting, the Saiyan could recall at one point having thought up of something inciting great glee but… What was it? Could it have just been the joy in the fact that Slug's crew was oblivious to the effects of the Ultimate Dragon Balls? Yeah… That had to be it…

Those sashes… Chayote couldn't shake off those thoughts to the point where her eyes began frantically scanning the dark for any traces of that which the Slug's crew took from her. Was it right or left? She couldn't say. For all she knew, she may have been hanging upside down and it was up to where she was now, then again, maybe she'd have long since died if those commanders hung her that way. If she was ever permitted death, that was. The whole point through Chayote felt like dying and knowing that the whole universe, including every single one of those assholes getting deleted, wasn't all that bad.

That sort of supreme, cosmic justice would've been a nice middle finger to Lord Slug's face but… He'd have likely not known it was because of Chayote and the Saiyan, likely due to her genes, very much wanted the bastard to know whom he shouldn't have screwed with.

Senzu! That was why she was so focused on the sashes, none of those alien scumbags knew what Senzu were so they just dumped the sash and focused on slobbering all over the Dragon Balls. Though it wasn't like Chayote could move a finger right now. She was too weak, every single one of her bones may as well have been broken with excruciating electric jolts being the only thing denying her the release of death, just as that green shrimp had promised her.

That lightning felt awfully similar to Demon King Piccolo's techniques, stuff his minions used to do. Yeah… Chayote must have made that relation at some point too, during her hazier moments and that was why she had referred to Slug and his lot as "demons" in her mind.

She was getting off-point, the Senzu, she had to get the Senzu but…

"Ki-ki-ki, sorry, sorry, we must have left you alone for too long. It's just that messing you up is getting so awfully boring, maybe we'll kill you off soon enough, not yet though, not yet! Ki-ki-ki!"

* * *

Was it dark or was Chayote blinded? There were ample painful moments in her memory, one of them could have easily belonged to one of those demon bastards poking her eyes out. Not immediately though, Chayote could recall them taking the Dragon Balls, she saw the orange gleams in the dark. Yeah, they did take the Dragon Balls, why hadn't they used them though? They did take the Dragon Balls, they took both of her sashes and placed them on the table. Those sashes… Why was she so much into those sashes? Her mind just couldn't move away from them.

"Heh, heh… I need a good punching bag, stand still! Oh, that's right, you don't have a choice, do you!? Bwahahahaha!" a fat, orange mug with spikes and a folded set of wings walked in from outside, shedding some light onto its revolting appearance. The last thing the light illuminated was the fatso taking a punching stance and putting up his arms.

* * *

Chayote couldn't see anything. Come to think of it, neither could she smell anything. All of her bones were broken and nobody breaking them have been all too subtle about it. Certainly plenty of her blood was spilled but then why couldn't she smell any of it? Shit, she did still have her nose, didn't she? At some point she could still see, those bright, orange gleams suggested that. Yeah, those were when they took the Dragon Balls off of her, placed the sash holding them as well as yet another sash onto the table.

That other sash – Senzu! Shit! She was too busted to move a finger, not to mention that stasis field restraining her limbs. Not that it was of any use – if she was battered and broken, there was no use restraining her limbs. At the moment the only function that the stasis fields around her wrists and feet performed was keeping Chayote in a good, upright position for optimal beatdown positioning.

Jaco bolted, that cowardly asshole. If only he was here, he could have passed her a Senzu. One Senzu and she'd recover all of her injuries, not to mention power up immensely. She'd make mincemeat out of every demonic scumbag on this ship or any soldier under their employ. Shit, that Lord Slug guy ran an operation that Demon King Piccolo only dreamed of running. His own soldiers, plenty of spawns to do his bidding, all of his spawns were crazy strong, suggesting immense might of Lord Slug himself too.

"You brutish Saiyan, common torture is beneath me but… A barbarian such as yourself deserves what she gets!" the blue guy with horns and blond hair walked in from the light, the light entered when the door to the torture chamber opened and left when it closed behind him. Being beat down by someone wearing what seemed like a purple blouse hurt worse than his fists and he easily had three times her power level.

* * *

She just couldn't focus! Maybe it was because she couldn't see in general? There was no sense of sight until the door would have opened or something magical was unveiled, such as the time when one of the commanders opened the sash with the Dragon Balls. The sash… There was another one. Yeah, they placed both sashes by Chayote's side on the table. The other one… What was the other one?

Senzu! It had Senzu! Chayote didn't take much but she didn't have much chance to use any she did take, always leaving all of her equipment save for the Dragon Radar on the ship. Damn, if they looted her ship, they probably took the Dragon Radar, then again, Lord Slug probably already had all of the Dragon Ba… Senzu. She needed to focus on the Senzu. It was no use! Her whole body was broken. These were kind of familiar thoughts, has she thought them before? Why did the smiling image of that cowardly buffoon Jaco come to mind? He bolted when he could have slipped her a Senzu or something. It's not like he would have had trouble moving it unseen, he could move his gun to his own hands with his mind for fu…

Wait! Chayote closed her eyes and tried imagining the sash of Senzu, nobody knew what they were and all that the commanders could think or talk about was the Dragon Balls she brought. The fact that she brought whole four of them, oh, that drove them into absolute ecstasy. The sort of ecstasy that somebody who had the remaining three Dragon Balls would have experienced.

It wasn't tough opening her mouth, her jaw was busted and felt like it had recovered wrong from one of the many times that it was broken. Something cold bumped into Chayote's throat and fell without weight onto her tongue. Even moving her tongue felt like torment, it was as if the tongue and her entire mouth were suffering from fatigue all by themselves. The Senzu tasted like mashed seaweed for some reason…

* * *

"Hmph… How far away from Namek?" Lord Slug wondered, turning to the soldier by the star map who jumped up and must have wet his uniform from inside just a little after being addressed by the space tyrant who was known for murdering his own minion or two just out of sheer frustration.

"Three days, Lord Slug," the soldier muttered and screamed as if he had aimed to curdle someone's blood whole while an imperial red beam pierced his chest cavity and dropped him dead, cutting his screams short. The space overlord didn't need to declare the need to speed up the process any further than that as soldiers began flooding the control panels and inputting commands wildly out of fear to be next.

"Are you sure you want to use those Dragon Balls on Namek, Lord Slug? I thought you wanted your youth back more than anything, why wait?" Angila wondered, looking at his superior. Despite receiving a scolding stare back from Lord Slug, Angila's face was filled with respectful curiosity and the desire to learn rather than questioning his leader, that was why Slug smirked and shrugged his hands.

"I do," the elderly space tyrant confirmed, "However, none of you could see what I saw in those Dragon Balls. They weren't Namekian."

"Wh-What!?" the beady eyes of Medamatcha clapped a couple of times.

"They were made by a Namekian but they were awfully defective. I could sense an overload of negative energy inside them, unlike anything I've sensed before. That energy was growing with each passing second too, not settling down. It feels as if somebody had tried to make the perfect Dragon Balls – ones that don't have a time limit and can grant any wish imaginable, in the end, they've created a weapon of mass destruction." Lord Slug explained. "If I was to use them on the cruiser, they'd destroy it without question as any wish they'd grant would be full of that awesome negative energy they hold."

"And the Saiyan woman? For someone so mighty and unscrupulous, you've insisted we keep her alive. I wanna eat her heart, Lord Slug…" Wings raised his meaty hand and clutched his fingers, imagining them wrapping around a still-beating Saiyan heart as he stared with lust and hunger at the imaginary organ that he could almost feel pulsing in his heart.

"That woman knows where those Dragon Balls came from. That means she knows a Namekian that might have invented them. I can guide that Namekian to inventing proper Dragon Balls for my use. Who knows, he might be a Super-Namekian like me. Before we do that, however, we land on Namek and use these Dragon Balls there to ravage the rock that rejected me once and for all. If they would not have me, they can all die." Lord Slug smiled as he stared at a Dragon Ball with two black stars on it.

A violent shake threw Lord Slug out of his throne, sending his spawns all in a fritz as they too struggled to stay on their feet. All of the soldiers that didn't fumble and fall on their faces picked up their arms and ran out to check for the source of the quake while Lord Slug rose with a cracked helmet and stared with a shocked pair of eyes.

"What was that!?" Angila turned to Wings, Medamatcha and Zeeun.

"It came from the Saiyan's chamber!" Medamatcha pointed with a petrified expression.

Zeeun lifted Medamatcha off the ground by his head and pulled the undergrown demon spawn up to his face. "Tell me you weren't stupid enough to heal the Saiyan!" he yelled out at the face of his terrified comrade.

"I-I didn't, I swear! I'm no idiot, you don't let a Saiyan recover from a life-threatening injury, everyone knows that!" Medamatcha shrieked out, worried about his life.

"Go, you fools!" Lord Slug roared out with vitality unbefitting his decrepit body. "Every second you're spending here babbling she's plowing through our soldiers and doing whatever she pleases!"

"Heh heh, lucky for you I've got a cool head…" Wings put on the scouter he had picked up from Chayote on the right side of his face and pressed the button that turned it on. "I'll sniff that Saiyan right out!"

"Make sure you find out the planet she came from before you kill her. She's too dangerous to be left alive, evidently…" Lord Slug sighed while taking the seat back on his throne.

* * *

Lowering her Ki signature to evade being tracked by scouter was a pain, especially when Chayote needed to hide from the soldiers rushing through the halls. Regardless of the trouble that this caused, she still needed to reach the room with the Dragon Balls and it was more than likely that it was the throne room where Lord Slug himself was. Either way, there was one more location she needed to visit first, a location that she'd have planned on hitting even if she wasn't captured.

A bright, clean bone-colored shroud slivered out of the open room where Chayote felt a handful of weak but revolting Ki signatures. Seeing a small, swampy forest inside of a planetoid-sized cruiser felt shocking all of its own but this was a location that needed to be taken out. A handful of Slug's soldiers ran past Chayote, not noticing that the person inside a soldier's uniform looked awfully feminine-shaped and frail compared to the normal Lord Slug soldier that flooded the halls.

"A soldier wandered into our woods!?" a hiss filled the air after Chayote walked in and let the door shut behind her.

"I've got no time, show yourselves you hags!" the Saiyan grunted after taking off the helmet and showing her face to the white oblivion flooding the dead woods inside the room.

"The Hysterical One!? No! You shouldn't be here! He promised you wouldn't be here, that you wouldn't kill us!" the voice hissed, this time filled with dread. Judging from what Chayote could pick up, this was a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, not that it mattered, an emerald orb formed in Chayote's hand that would shake the cruiser once more and leaving a nasty hole on the cruiser's side that sucked all that Chayote didn't murder outright into the grasp of cold, dead space.

Just mere minutes later the door to the room where the priestesses with the uncanny ability to sense Namekian magic used to reside opened, only for Wings to close it up again after realizing that he was being sucked inside through the jarring hole on the ceiling – a chilling security hazard that would take at least four days to fix.

"Shit, her signature boomed in here just a second ago and now she's gone again… Could she have gone out the drain?" Wings wondered, scratching his chubby chin with his oversized claws.

"For all our sake, let's just hope that she can conceal her power level…" Angila shrugged. "Keep looking!"

* * *

"So you're Slug!" Chayote stared at the crooked, swampy-green figure that was too clad in cloth and armor to tell too many details about. The frontal portion of his face was visible, as were his dried out lips that were a familiar shade of green. He was just another ancient Namekian, just like Demon King Piccolo.

"That's Lord Slug to you, Saiyan, don't go anywhere and my clan will join us in a second. In the meantime, why don't you tell me the planet you've come from?" Lord Slug answered.

"Why don't you ask your priestesses where the nearest source of Namekian magic is? They'll tell you everything you want to know. Plus, I don't think that anyone's gonna come in here, I've picked up an interesting trick on the planet I came from – to control my power level." Chayote pointed at herself with her thumb, feeling proud of her swelling up power.

"I see, so you're hiding like a little space-rat." Lord Slug taunted the Saiyan.

Images of Demon King Piccolo smirking and mocking her the same way flashed by Chayote's mind, blinding her temporarily, the Saiyan stumbled back. Painful flashbacks to the torture surrounded her like a tunnel of worst nightmares that all led up to this point – yet another Namekian tyrant mocking her to her face with Chayote still too weak to do anything about it. Power… Power boiled inside her and it was tempting to let it out but she's gone down that path before and it had never before led to anything worthwhile.

"Maybe next time, when the fate of my planet isn't at stake…" Chayote shook her head and swallowed down her swelling rage, gulping all of the power that flowed with it. She didn't have much time now that she let this tremendous flare emerge. The Saiyan raised her arms over her head. "Solar Fist!" she yelled out.

* * *

"Lord Slug!" Commander Zeeun accompanied by Slug's entire clan burst into the throne room, confused by seeing their chief rubbing his eyes and writhing in irritation on his throne. "Wings said that the Saiyan's power level was just here!"

"She's gone… The damned bitch blinded me!" Lord Slug rose from his throne room, carefully opening one eye after another.

"That's how she outran me too!" Medamatcha pointed at Lord Slug while turning to his comrades. "That Saiyan ain't just common Frieza Army footsoldier, she's got scary techniques under her belt."

"She took the Dragon Balls!" Angila turned pale and pointed at the empty stand by Lord Slug's throne, only the royal rag rested on it, gently tipped over the side and hanging as if it would soon fall under even the slightest disruptions. "Quick, to the landing hull, she's going to use one of our vessels to escape!"

"She won't go far, if she did take the Dragon Balls, the priestesses will lead me right to her and if her planet has more Dragon Balls, they'll lead us right to her planet as well." Lord Slug clenched his fist as it began glowing in a fiery ring that grew in size while it pulsed.

"Umm… Lord Slug… She…" Commander Zeeun butt his fingers together, neither of Lord Slug's Demon Clan wanted to admit it to their Super-Namekian overlord what the Saiyan targeted first upon escaping her torture chamber.

* * *

"I don't know where I am…" Chayote mashed all of the buttons wildly while her vessel soared through the empty expanse of space, "But let's just hope I can still make it back to Earth in time!" she grit her teeth as sweat ran down her face. It wasn't the weary nor the worry of her recent feat of escape that troubled her, it was the sector of space that Lord Slug's spaceship was in. Her own spaceship was all busted up, the aliens tried to find the exact gadget that served as the Dragon Radar so Chayote had to destroy the whole thing before fleeing.

Of what use was saving the Earth by the skin of her teeth if Lord Slug and his crew found them by tracking them down with the Dragon Radar regardless and destroyed the planet personally? The worst part was over, all that was left now was the home run, most importantly – making it back in time!


	84. Return to Planet Earth

A cascade of loud shouts and grunts spread from a flat hill across a small village. A young lady with long, black hair and a sports attire comprised of white shorts and a red tracksuit with a logo of number "8" on both her arms moved around a titanic man with arms that looked like they could crush boulders without much supernatural assistance of his inner power and donning a frightening helmet of gold and bull's horns sticking out from the side. The stalwart titan withstood the relentless flurry of the swift assailant and thrust his palm onward, hitting the poor teen right in the chest and sending her flying.

"Oh, sorry, Chi-Chi! Hope I didn't hit you too hard!" the monstrous man lost his cool and loomed over the fallen girl, extending his arms to assist her in getting up.

"Stop hand-holding me, dad!" the young lady threw her hands around and slapped the help away as a result. "Jeez, I don't understand how you know exactly where I'm going to be!"

"That's because I don't track the battle with just my eyes, I perceive it by sensing what's inside, your Ki. There's no need to push it, you're making excellent progress! You're much stronger and faster than your old man was at your age!" the Ox-King laughed out, looking chipper and smacked his belly. "Honestly, I don't even know why you're training so hard anymore – Demon King Piccolo is gone, no more bandits are attacking our village. The world's finishing up with the repairs already, soon nobody will remember it had all gone to hell for a day…"

"It won't do!" Chi-Chi threw her hands down and exclaimed at her father. "I need to become strong so that Son Goku would fulfill his promise already. At this pace, it's like he doesn't even remember I'm alive, or something. I won't be young and energetic wife material forever, you know."

"You know, now I kind of regret suggesting that the only thing that boy recognizes is strength…" the Ox-King scratched his cheek. He looked up at the sky as if asking someone he loved dearly who has since passed away for assistance in this matter. His daughter seemed to have inherited her mother's beauty and grace but her father's temper. "Oh, look, Chi-Chi, a shooting star!"

"Hmm? Beautiful! Quick, shooting star, I want to be…"

"No, you can't say it out loud, Chi-Chi!" the Ox-King warned his daughter. "Or else you may become as strong as a dozen of Demon King Piccolos, Son Goku won't ever even look your way. Wishes made to shooting stars are fickle things!"

The young lady closed her eyes, grit her teeth and concentrated on her heart's deepest desire almost as if she was trying to force a turd out. The Ox-King observed the falling orb of fire with a bit more worry, focusing more on the falling star itself and not on what it might have granted him. The giant observed the falling star a bit longer until at least he was certain of his worst fears.

"Chi-Chi! Get away from that, it's coming right toward us!" the Ox-King pointed at the falling object and the two started bolting from the location of the star's crash. Luckily for the pair, it was no star at all, just a mere spaceship crash-landing near their peaceful training spot and forcing a pulse of quakes across the nearby village. Living down the hillside to the Ox-King made the villagers used to occasional natural disasters though so while a few of them did leave their homes and observe the distant fire and felt the settling rumblings of the disturbed ground, most of them just braced through the initial impact and went along with their day.

"That's no falling star at all…" Chi-Chi pointed at the object that made both the father and daughter to fall down from the force of impact despite being at least 250 m. away from the impact zone. "What is this?"

"A spaceship?" the Ox-King scratched his head. "What's that doing here? Doesn't look like one of Bulma's or Roshi's."

"Damn! Landed in a whole wrong place! Can't count for shit when I'm mad!" a loud grunt made both Earthlings turn for a curious sight that stood atop of Ox-King's mansion and stared off into the distance. Wondering where she was and staring at the horizons of the Diablo Desert far off in the distance was a girl of messy, black hair and cool, half-shut eyes. Matching the typical description of an alien, she wore a fitting black bodysuit underneath white, bone-texture armor.

"She's got a tail, just like Goku!" Chi-Chi pointed out while one of her hand smacked herself on the cheek in disbelief.

"Goku!? That's Kakarot's Earth name!" Chayote looked back and down, noticing the colossal man and his teen daughter staring right back at her. In a blitz, the Saiyan moved down from her improvised observation platform down to where she could talk with the pair, she didn't have much time.

"Where am I!? I need to get to Kami's Temple, quick!" Chayote pointed at her spaceship. The Earthlings seemed to baffled to understand a word she was saying so Chayote just ran up to the wreckage and burrowed in it for a couple of moments before pulling out a torn up sash holding more than a handful of treasures inside, treasures that gleamed with an orange light through the holes in the cloth. "I need to get these to Kami's Temple soon, or else the whole Earth is gonna blow up!"

The young lady seemed to be the first to understand the gravity of the situation, she gasped and covered up her mouth before turning to her father in horror. The much larger man seemed completely paralyzed in the gravity of the situation.

"Dad! The Earth can't blow up yet, I won't be able to get married if the Earth blows up!" the young lady shook and pulled her old man before getting sick of it and slapping him across the face a couple of times. Chayote's glare sharpened when she sensed some neat wallop being packed in the seemingly puny arms of this girl.

"Y-Yes… This is… Well… This is the Ox Village by the Frypan Mountain, you said you need to get to the Kami's Temple… I'm not sure I'm familiar with that location…" the Ox-King scratched his chin. "Do you maybe have any more details to go with that?"

"It's in the Sacred Land of Korin, to the north of the Fortuneteller Baba's palace and far north-west from Muten Roshi's island!" Chayote jumbled her way through words, for how long has she been gone, exactly? With her having replaced her ship with one that wasn't designed to keep a solid grasp over time, she couldn't have been sure. Her heart calmed down a solid couple of paces just after seeing the Earth still floating where it was supposed to be.

"Oh… You know Muten Roshi!?" the Ox-King's face beamed with an energetic smile, "That's amazing, how is that old man!? I was one of his pupils, you see!"

"Dad!" the teenager shook the lumbering giant.

"Oh, right, the Sacred Land of Korin is to the north-west from here, I'd say you're at about a halfway point from Muten Roshi's island and the Sacred Land of Korin." The Ox-King pointed at the approximate direction.

"I see, thanks!" Chayote nodded and turned to the far-off location. She was alarmed when she couldn't sense any familiar Ki signatures so the help from this giant might have been just what she needed to save the Earth.

"Wait!" the giant's daughter yelled out, making Chayote turn back and begin jogging in place. Time was one luxury she didn't have right now so any time spent here talking threatened to swallow the entire Earth up in flames at any moment. "You're going to see Goku, aren't you? I know these orange orbs and wherever they are, Goku's always not too far away."

"Yeah, I might bump into Kakarot, I suppose." Chayote shrugged. "I really need to hurry up though so if you wanna come, jump on my back and we're off. I warn you, I'm not gonna hold back so I won't be to blame if you fall off! I'm in a hurry to save the world here."

"Okay!" Chi-Chi nodded with an enthusiastic dip of her chin and jumped onto Chayote's back. It looked way weird given how Chayote was just half of a head taller than the teen girl but, with a powerful burst of Ki, Chayote blasted off toward the location where the Sacred Land of Korin was.

* * *

"How do you guys know Kakarot anyways?" Chayote asked while Chi-Chi struggled to keep her arms locked around Chayote's neck. Had the two been anywhere near in terms of power, the Earthling would have posed a serious threat of outright choking the Saiyan out but now her grip didn't seem all that much stronger than that of a tie.

"My name's Chi-Chi and that was my father, the Ox-King, we've one met Son Goku when we were both children and he was looking for the Dragon Balls. He ended up helping us with the Frypan Mountain situation." Chi-Chi shouted out from the intense air pressure slamming right into her face. Chayote wasn't exactly subtle with her flying methods but the brat knew what she was getting into. "I don't understand… Why are you calling Son Goku that?"

"Oh, that's his Saiyan name, his real name. Son Goku is the name that his Earthling grandfather gave him. Given how I'm a Saiyan just like Kakarot, I'd rather call him by his real name." Chayote explained.

"Saiyan?" Chi-Chi wondered.

"He's an alien, I'm an alien too. Demon King Piccolo is the evil of another alien personified." Chayote broke it down in layman's terms.

"Wow! That might pose some problems…" Chi-Chi cried out.

"Huh? Why's that? Are you racist, or something?" Chayote turned her head back.

"No, it's just… How will we have kids when he's an alien!?" Chi-Chi seemed to be getting quite upset at this news, just an inch away from a full-on tantrum.

"Wait… Kids?" Chayote wondered. "You intend on mating with Kakarot?"

"D-Don't say it so bluntly!" Chi-Chi yelled out making Chayote have to loop around to maintain her course and flight stability, this girl was way weird and Chayote was an alien who had some of the roughest adaptation period anybody could expect someone to have. Even by Earthling standards, Chayote was sure this brat was way off. "Yes, Son Goku promised to marry me, we're going to get married when he comes back for me and then, if it works out, we will have children together and have a happy family!"

"Your temperature is rising, are you sure you're not having a fever or something?" Chayote wondered while looking back at the hot-red passenger she was carrying on her back.

"Umm… Say… You're like… Son Goku too, right? What is your… Relationship with him exactly?" Chi-Chi wondered with a mutter so quiet and drowned out by the howling wind and the rustling of passing-by mountains and occasional buildings or trees that Chayote had to reform the sentence halfway in her mind to translate it to something she could understand.

"Oh, I guess we're cohorts of sorts. I'm not gonna mate with him, that's for sure so you can have him all to yourself…" Chayote laughed out. "I'm holding Kakarot up to train with me so that we could get real strong alongside one another. I don't care about anything else but getting strong."

"Oh…" Chi-Chi hummed out. Chayote felt really glad that this girl wasn't aware of Chayote's earlier intentions about rejoining the Frieza Army. She'd have no doubt inquired all about that and having met Frieza Army in space and shut that path down so definitively, Chayote no longer felt certain about that part of her intentions. The odd part was that her Ki control has been on point ever since she made that decision. "Aren't you planning on getting married? You're older than me, what if you never get married at all?"

"Huh? I don't think I quite understand this whole "marriage" thing you Earthlings talk about. Saiyans just sort of take what they want, you know, we don't plan those sorts of things ahead too much, everything's kind of a spur of the moment thing, you know. It's not for me to initiate that sort of thing. You're weird, you've got weird things in your head, I'd rather talk about fighting, honestly." Chayote shook mid-flight. She was unfamiliar with this discomfort. It must have been something of Earthlings that had rubbed off on her. Like a virus, almost…

"R-Right… I think that a husband should be the one to propose too but… Son Goku… He promised to marry me and he hasn't come back in years. I'm… I'm afraid he forgot about me. That's why I asked you to bring me to him, I want to remind him of that promise he made." Chi-Chi yelled out.

"Hmm… You're a real weirdo for sure. If you want to do that marrying thing with Kakarot, why are you waiting for him to do it? Just punch him in the face and marry him all over the Kami's Temple… Maybe not on Kami's Temple though, Upa and Mr. Popo are gonna be really mad at me if they find out. Still, show some initiative. That's how Saiyans do things, even if Kakarot hit his head as a kid, I'm sure he'll understand such a thing." Chayote gave the best advice she could give.

"Ah, that tower, it's huge!" Chi-Chi gasped.

"Yeah, that's where we're headed, come on, now! Just a few more seconds, don't blow up for just a few more seconds!" Chayote chanted to herself like a mantra while she kicked her flying speed up to as much as she could. Flying speed wasn't all about one's power, it had just as much to do with the mastery over the flying technique as well so the drastic increase in power and speed in combat that Chayote had undergone in space didn't translate all that well in flying speed.

* * *

"Chayote!" Upa's familiar shriek met Chayote's ears when she landed down onto the Kami's Temple and placed the torn up sash with the Ultimate Dragon Balls down on the ground, letting the orbs roll around freely within arm's reach of one another.

"You did it!" Mr. Popo smiled. "And with thirteen whole days to spare!"

"Huh? I had thirteen more days? That… Sort of kills the tension…" Chayote squinted in disappointment. "What's going on anyway? I couldn't sense anyone's Ki, where is everybody?"

"Oh, you need to catch-up, I guess…" Upa smiled at Chayote and dragged her hand before Mr. Popo pointed at Chi-Chi and turned to Chayote with a bland face.

"Who's this?" he asked.

"Oh, that's Chi-Chi, she helped show me the way here. She wants to see Kakarot, she says she's gonna marry him, or something." Chayote rubbed the back of her head, trying to explain things to others that she herself could sparsely understand.

"M-Marry, Son Goku!?" Upa's jaw dropped.

"Y-Yes! Son Goku promised to marry me almost ten years ago already." Chi-Chi pointed out. "I'm not sure what this place is but I would like to see Son Goku and remind him of the promise he made."

"I kinda said that she shouldn't bother and that she should just show initiative if she wanted to mate with Kakarot but she doesn't get it…" Chayote leaned up to Upa and whispered to his ear. With a rampant blush on his face, the native young man stumbled back and clenched his fists.

"This is the Kami's Temple, a holy place from which countless guardians have overseen the order and protection of Earth, Chayote!" Upa seemed to object about as much as the Saiyan thought him to object.

"Son Goku and the others are training deeper within the temple, that's why you couldn't sense them from down there." Mr. Popo pointed out. Of all the people to object with Chayote bringing Chi-Chi here, the Saiyan had counted on Mr. Popo objecting the most but the genie just seemed more interested in bringing the Ultimate Dragon Balls away for safekeeping, he seemed to completely ignore Chi-Chi which was unlike Mr. Popo.

Didn't he kick Chayote off because he thought she didn't belong here?

"Well, we'll deal with that when it comes to it." Upa smacked his forehead and shook his head. "Young lady, please come with me, I'll show you two to where the others are training."

"The others?" Chayote wondered.

"That's right. When you flew off, Son Goku and Krillin collected the Dragon Balls and brought everybody killed by Demon King Piccolo and his demons back to life. The Dragon Balls will probably turn active again in a month or two. Then everybody had agreed to train here, on Kami's Temple to become as strong as they could so that they could prepare for such a day when Piccolo Jr. makes his way out of the Room of Spirit and Time." Upa pointed out and led the two young women to a dark room with rough, golden outlines of clocks hanging all over the shrouded, black oblivion. With a bright blink, Son Goku, Krillin, Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu, and Yamcha all returned to the center of the room, confused as to why they've been pulled back from their training.

Judging from their damaged clothes and bruises all over them, they've been hitting the gym pretty hard these last thirteen days short of a year.

"Huh? Why are we back?" Goku looked around before his face turning grim and serious. "That Ki, amazing!"

It took the confused bunch a fair bit of time before they turned to Chayote and realized that she was standing right in front of them alongside Upa.

"Chayote!" everybody yelled out in unison and rushed to the returned space cowgirl.

"We were starting to get worried, you know, this whole last month was getting really tense…" Yamcha laughed out while everybody took their turns raising their fists up for a bump.

"As you can see, while you were away working with the Dragon Balls, we've been training really hard, so don't be surprised if you get a bit outmatched by us. I'm sure you'll be able to keep up with us, eventually, if you work hard…" Krillin shrugged, teasing the Saiyan.

"Hmph… You've become quite the comedian…" Chayote smirked.

Krillin's face turned pale when he tried sensing Chayote's Ki instead of making rough estimates with his reasoning. He must not have expected the Saiyan falling just an inch short to dying under multiple occasions while out in space as well as spending most of her free time doing image training.

"I've got to admit, I lucked out that a scary space tyrant had found three Dragon Balls and I ended up swiping them away from him. I might not have made it in time otherwise…" Chayote sighed. Recalling that nightmarish encounter now it seemed like a stroke of good luck for her, there was no way she'd have been able to gather two more Dragon Balls and return home in just thirteen days. Although, back then, it seemed like anything but good luck…

"Say, who's this cutie?" Krillin pointed his thumb at Chi-Chi while examining her, trying to recall if they had ever met because it wouldn't have made sense for a complete stranger to be so deep inside Kami's Temple. "She's pretty strong but I don't remember ever meeting her…" he summarized his examination.

"I am Chi-Chi, I've come to marry Son Goku…" Chi-Chi replied with a shy expression, embarrassed by Krillin's rather bold examination of her face and features.

"M-Marry!?" everybody leaned back in shock.

"Awesome!" Goku pumped his fist into the air. "I could use some food right about now!"


	85. Room of Spirit and Time Reopened

"So what you're saying is that marriage isn't some kind of food?" Goku looked around the table full of martial artists stuffing their faces full with a face that showed off his mistrust of what he was hearing.

"For the last time, Kakarot, it's some sort of mating ritual that the Earthlings do." Chayote gave him a scolding look. The oaf had gone through a growth spurt during the last year that she hadn't seen him but he was still shorter than Yamcha and Tenshinhan.

"Actually, it's not about mating at all, it's sort of a… Subscription, if you will. It's hard to explain, which is why you should be more careful about the promises you make, Goku!" Krillin looked at his pal with a warning look. "You're lucky that this time it resulted in your scoring a hot babe as a wife but it can get you into a great deal of trouble some other time."

Goku just laughed out and stroke the back of his head, looking entirely unapologetic about the whole thing. This was so much like him, despite growing up on Earth he didn't let the Earth change him one bit, as it has changed Chayote, instead he was the one changing everyone around him to better deal with the kind of person he was.

"You mean… You didn't mean your promise then?" Chi-Chi gasped, she had barely moved her food, likely because that wasn't the main thing on her mind at the moment. Chayote could kind of respect someone who always thought about their mission first.

"Nah, I'll do the whole marrying thing. I might have gotten it wrong back then but I won't go back on a promise!" Goku gave the young woman a thumb up. Chayote smirked before finishing her soup with one giant slurp that made Chiaotzu, who was seated beside her look at her with bafflement.

"I can't believe you're not objecting at all to this…" Krillin turned to Chayote. "I thought… You know… With the two of you being the only Saiyans around…"

"Huh? No, it's actually quite common for Saiyans to get together with people they hardly know. That's the basis for a Saiyan family – the whim of a moment entrapping you for eternity in an infernal home, it makes going to war so much easier." Chayote smirked and gave her bald friend a thumb up, Krillin laughed and rubbed his lip with an index finger, embarrassed about something.

"Not what I was implying but…" Krillin shrugged before beginning to look for a decent change in topics. "Anyway, it's gonna be such a ball, marrying in the Kami Temple itself, there's no better place to get married in when you think about it!"

"Oh, no. We must get married back on Frypan Mountain or Mt. Paozu, that's where your grandpa lived, right?" Chi-Chi objected.

"Huh? But we have to stay on our guard for when Piccolo Jr. leaves the Room of Spirit and Time. Goku can't leave the Kami Temple. If Piccolo Jr. leaves, he won't be able to sense him from back down and a whole mess of bad things can go down!" Krillin tried pointing it out to Chi-Chi but it seemed like a fool's errand.

"He made a promise and he said he'd keep it. We must get married at one of our ancestral homes and I must wear my mother's wedding dress too! Our marriage has to be perfect!" Chayote had noticed a source of strength in Chi-Chi's tone that she hadn't felt before. Well, this lady seemed like quite the wheel blocker but at least she knew what she wanted.

"What, you mean you guys are just stuck here, waiting for that demon bastard to leave the room?" Chayote squinted one eye in disgust. "You should have gone into the room, scouted him out and destroyed him while he was still a baby."

"That's out of the question, Chayote, Piccolo Jr. must be exceptionally strong, plus, the space that the Room of Spirit and Time covers is vast, possibly even infinite, you'd have more luck finding an egg floating in space rather than in there." Mr. Popo who was, up to that point just staring at the feast, now joined in on the conversation. As always he was being cowardly about doing his job.

"The whole reason Demon King Piccolo was such a pain in everybody's butt was that you didn't kill him fast enough. Isn't the time way dilated in that room? That means that with every day you waste Piccolo Jr. is getting way stronger. By the time he feels good and ready to leave – he'll steamroll over us all." Chayote shook her head after slamming a massive, half-eaten dinosaur thigh.

"Piccolo hasn't left up until now, that must indicate that he's lost and not quite sure where he is, doesn't it? It's his prime goal to take over the world, isn't it?" Tenshinhan raised a point. "There is no guarantee that he can find his way out of there, as Mr. Popo said."

"We should have blown that doorway up when we had a chance – leave him trapped there permanently." Yamcha crossed his arms over his chest and rested in his chair. He wore a set of battle scars that he didn't have previously, a trait that Chayote noticed and grew to be quite fond of. For whatever reason, she liked a man better when he had decorations of tough battles on his face.

"Have you no pride as a martial artist!?" Tenshinhan slammed his fist at the table. "Maybe if you trained harder, you wouldn't need to think up of despicable shortcuts like that?"

"What's that? You wanna go at it again!?" Yamcha stood up, prompting Tenshinhan to do the same. Mr. Popo took a few steps back before rushing in to defuse the heating situation between the two rivals.

"Umm… I don't think I understand what's going on but… If that Piccolo person has been trapped inside a room that dilates time, wouldn't he have long since died?" Chi-Chi wondered. "I mean, judging from how you guys were talking about it, it doesn't seem like there's that much food or something to do in there…"

"No, it's pretty empty and horrible inside there!" Goku snickered. "It'd be a damned shame if he died. I really want to have a good bout with that guy!"

"There's no chance of that." Mr. Popo shook his head. "If Piccolo Jr. is anything like Kami, he doesn't need food, just a little bit of water here and then. If the room can sustain a pair of people for a year of the room's time, Piccolo Jr. might survive there for however long he wants."

"I wish there was something I could do…" Upa clutched his fists and tensed his body up before going frail again. While he had powered up a decent amount since Chayote had last seen him, a physical power-up that surely paled in comparison to the spiritual experience he'd gained, he was still beneath even the old Demon King Piccolo's level by lightyears.

"You just focus on completing your training as Kami and passing your trials. We'll take care of beating up anyone threatening the Earth for you!" Chiaotzu floated beside Upa and placed his hand over the young man's shoulder.

"The zombie-shrimp gets it. Now that I've returned, it seems like I need to pick up the slack for you miserable Earthlings again." Chayote grumbled, having completed her bone of meat and placed it back onto the plate in a weighty thud. "So here's what's gonna happen – you are going to continue your training, I'm gonna go to the Room of Spirit and Time alongside Upa so that he can learn to get better at his God stuff sooner and I can do some decent training myself. We'll also scope the place out for Piccolo Jr., I'll kill him if I get the chance."

"Aren't you forgetting something, Chayote? You can't kill Piccolo Jr. The Dragon Balls are tied to his life again." Krillin pointed out. The damn shorty was right!

"Well, in that case, I'll kick his ass and drag him out of the room to where he can't threaten anyone at such an escalating pace. We might need the room in the future. There are far more frightening demons out there in space than Piccolo." Chayote nodded to herself.

"But what about my marriage?" Chi-Chi raised her most valid concern.

"Oh… And Kakarot can get married to this chick once he's free to leave this place whenever he wants." Chayote nodded to herself again, as if she hadn't missed this point entirely the first time.

* * *

"This is complete madness…" Yamcha shook his head, he didn't like the idea of somebody entering the Room of Space and Time at all but he seemed to have been outvoted and most definitely overpowered alongside those that supported the notion.

"Maybe, but Chayote and Goku are the only ones capable of stopping Piccolo at the moment. We might have grown a great deal stronger, but they still are the strongest out of us all, you must be feeling it, right?" Tenshinhan shrugged, looking a tad let down by the fact that after all of his time training and working hard he wasn't quite at the same level as Goku or Chayote.

"Yeah, and here I thought that she'd stagnate floating around in space for a whole year, it's like she hadn't skipped a day of training at all. Just what kind of dangers did she face out there?" Yamcha looked up in the direction of the skies that disguised the greater universe lying outside of his reach. Skies that were hidden behind the pearly ceiling of the Kami Temple.

"It ain't fair, that Upa would be entering the room alongside you…" Goku objected.

"The Earth needs a Kami as soon as possible and you've already had your shot at the room, Kakarot. Plus, you've got a marriage to attend to." Chayote cheeked her fellow Saiyan before the two disappeared into the vast white. Mr. Popo shaking with each moment that the door remained open but breathing out a sigh of relief once they shut behind the pair.

"I'm surprised you didn't oppose to that idea, you're usually kind of adamant about those sort of things…" Krillin turned at Mr. Popo who just wiped the sweat off of his face.

"Chayote is right. Earth needs Upa to complete his God Trials as soon as possible, him accelerating the training process a bit would go a long way." Mr. Popo spoke while staring at the door with a blank expression.

"J-Just what is this room!?" Upa cried out, wheezing and panting as he had only an insignificant speck of the oxygen he needed to survive and the gravity kept on pulling him down on his knees. "This is utter torture!"

"Oh… I'm impressed that you can withstand that temperature. Mr. Popo must have toughened you up a great deal but I won't be anywhere near as soft on you. You'll want Piccolo Jr. to find us and kill us by the time we're through." Chayote put up her fist. She needed a decent training partner to gain as much power as possible if she was ever to return back to space. One thing she hated was being humiliated in combat like she was facing Lord Slug's clan, a whole thing another was being humiliated by loathsome demons.

It was because that lousy bunch had humiliated her over and over again, beating her in almost every encounter that Chayote had developed a particular distaste for their kind and felt like the greatest torture of all would be not killing Piccolo Jr. in the most brutal and violent way possible when she encounters him around these parts.

"Alright, so what's the problem with you and becoming a Kami?" Chayote wondered.

"I'm still not too good with materialization. I've mastered the elemental materialization but more complex things don't work too well…" Upa pulled out two tomahawks that hung crossed-up behind his back and put them in front of himself. "Plus, Mr. Popo claims that a Kami must be pure of heart, which I am hesitant to check."

"I know of plenty of ways to check that, but that'll come after we leave the room. Right now just let me scan the place through…" Chayote closed her eyes and concentrated on her Ki Sensory. The Room of Space and Time was as vast as Mr. Popo described, the range that Chayote's sensory covered may have been just a drop in an ocean and she should have had little to no problem sensing Ki all over the Earth. This was troubling.

"Well?" Upa took a calmer stance and lowered his weapons. His expression blanked out when Chayote's fist sent him cradling to his knees and sweating profusely as the pain from her straight shot to his gut as well as the shortness of oxygen and the rapidly switching temperatures made it impossible for him to rise on his feet without aid.

"You let down your guard. You're also fresh out of luck, there's no Piccolo Jr. here or anywhere near this temple. You said you had mastered that elemental stuff, that's what Goku used to defeat Demon King Piccolo, right?" Chayote stared with a judgmental look while Upa struggled to get back up, over this entire time he failed to rise above his knees.

"Yeah… Ki is in touch with the very life essence of all living things. The life force is a whole different kind of energy but it is related to Ki. You can manipulate Ki in a way that materializes objects out of thin air, if you're skilled at that sort of stuff, you can manipulate Ki to manifest elements too." Upa explained while Chayote helped him back up out of either mercy or the need to hurry this charade along.

"I've met an alien species that can do that. I didn't have any time to train with them but I plan to. Either way, let's work at making a Kami out of you." Chayote took a fighting stance and made Upa gulp down hard.

The poor boy was scared for his life which was the kind of mindset Chayote had wanted.

* * *

"They're out!" Mr. Popo pointed at the old wooden frame lamenting the fact that it was being used from the other side.

The entirety of the group located at the Kami Temple at the time rushed to the scene, ready to confront the emerging Piccolo Jr. if it was indeed the reborn Demon King who had sensed Chayote's Ki signature and rushed to the scene, discovering the exit from the Room of Spirit and time in the process. Chayote and Upa emerged with the black bodysuit Chayote had worn underneath the armor of Lord Slug's army being covered in holes and the armor itself bruised as if it had been rubbed against sandpaper for a millennia or two.

"Close the door already!" Yamcha prompted the pair but Upa and Chayote just snickered one to another and made sure to close the door as slowly as possible to psyche the present guardians of the Kami Temple out as much as possible.

"Well, any luck?" Goku wondered.

"Nope, Upa gave the Room of Space and Time one good scan at the end, his oversight had gone crazy good at some point, he said he can't sense a trace of that filthy demon inside." Chayote replied with a stroke over her hair that had gone a tad wild after a year of no care for it that followed another whole year of little care for it while she was roaming space.

"He had no reason not to attack and kill us, we've slept and had our guards down on multiple occasions yet he didn't appear. I… I don't think he's even there anymore." Upa declared.

"Huh? Not there anymore? But how could that be possible?" Chiaotzu extended his hands and feet forward while his face stretched out in fear.

"Are you saying we've lost track of a reincarnated Demon King?" Tenshinhan put his fist out, angered by the implication of their collective failure.

"Maybe, either way, it's time that Upa completes his God Trials now." Chayote looked to her side at a grown youth that had measured up to her shoulders at the time.

"Then that means?" Mr. Popo couldn't contain his excitement, he ran up to Upa and leaned forward to him.

"That's right, I've gotten the hang of most of the techniques you've shown me, all the fundamental spells. I'm ready, Mr. Popo!" Upa nodded and looked back at his future attendant with confidence that could rarely be spotted in the face of the young man who had spent most of his life making bold claims about what he would be like when he grew up and letting his father do the fighting for him without moving a finger to become any of the things he wanted to be like.

"So then if this Piccolo Jr. no longer threatens the world, can we maybe get married, Goku?" Chi-Chi ran up and wrapped her arms around Goku's who looked pretty uncomfortable with the show of affection at first but then just smiled and went along with it.

"I'd wait for when Upa becomes a Kami if I were you," Chayote pointed at the young native man with her thumb. "I mean, if you're looking for a best marriage ever, how about being married in the presence of an actual Kami?"

"That kind of works out, because being married involves someone pure and holy tying the two souls together, it would be perfect!" Krillin ran up in front of the pair and congratulated the two with his excited expression and support behind the suggestion.

"Sure, I've waited this long, I can wait until one more trial then." Chi-Chi nodded before returning to her routine of rubbing her face against Goku's arm.

"Come on, Chi-Chi, you're zapping my hand with electricity from your face, you know…" Goku pouted but for one of the world's most powerful fighters he offered quite measly resistance against the advances of the young woman.

Chayote found it quite fitting for such a submissive buffoon.


	86. An Unexpected Visitor

"So how much stronger did you get in that room?" Goku wondered, eyeing Chayote around with an inspecting look while the entirety of the inhabitants of the God Temple walked outside from the hallway where the Room of Spirit and Time was located.

"Not all that much. I've had some training but most of the time I've spent assisting Upa in his training. Turns out becoming a Kami is a far greater bother than I initially thought and at some point I almost wanted Piccolo Jr. to show his head and attack us." Chayote ran her hand through her hair and sighed with bother and frustration that was slowly relieving itself now that the Saiyan had realized that her troublesome time in the Room of Spirit and Time was over at last.

"I see… Well then, I wonder if Piccolo Jr. is just lost or if he truly did find a way to escape the room somehow. I'd really like to fight him one day, you know." Goku clenched his fists and stretched his body out.

"Tough to say, Upa's sensory abilities have far surpassed mine after just a couple of months inside that room and he couldn't sense a trace of him there. Then again, the room is pretty damn large. All I can say is that if Upa can't sense him – there's a fat chance he could sense anything else from wherever he is as well." Chayote shrugged. Her stare became fixed on Upa who just stood there staring at the skies.

"Hey, quit daydreaming, we've got a place to visit before you can complete your stupid trials and become Kami for good." Chayote yelled out to him but the young man remained stationary and stared at a point in space. With no haste in his motions, Upa reached behind his back for his tomahawks and swung them in a vertical circle before pressing their blades together.

A turbulent howl left the colliding blades, making its way into the layer of skies that were meant to be devoid of such natural occurrences as the typhoon that Upa had sent that way. For a moment there as everyone tensed up and struggled to maintain their footing, Chayote had wondered if the trainee to become Kami had only been showing off. It did not take long, however, for the round gust of raging winds to slam a weathered spacecraft right in front of the attendants of the God Temple.

"That's… Jaco's ship!" Chayote couldn't believe it. Everyone turned to her, surprised that she knew the nature of this spacecraft and, after realizing that the owner of this spacecraft was familiar to Chayote, Upa let up on the vortex of winds that contained it within.

"You know this spaceship, Chayote?" Tenshinhan wondered.

"Yeah, it belongs to the Galactic Patrol. They're sort of a space police force. I've met one of them who was traveling alongside Bulma's sister when I was looking for the Ultimate Dragon Balls." Chayote explained as briefly as she could.

"Bulma's sister!?" Krillin stumbled back in surprise before focusing attention on this spaceship that he lacked to spare before he knew this factoid.

"Oh… So Bulma had a sister? I see…" Goku reacted with as easy of a time dealing with such news as everyone expected for him.

The lid of the spaceship tilted up, letting those inside to leave the spaceship and confront the inhabitants of the God Temple where Upa had forced the spaceship soaring above the space of the planet he was about to swear to protect to land. This was the first time that the rest of the folks met Jaco though they dealt with the shocker of setting their eyes on a bona fide alien policeman easier than most would, which wasn't all that surprising, given they already know at least two aliens.

"And that's why I objected to coming to this damn planet!" Jaco grumbled while patting his bodysuit and grinding his teeth at the passenger of his ship. "And to think that I would receive this kind of welcome after I've helped out one of yours!"

"One of ours?" Yamcha wondered, bending his head to gander at the open spaceship and noticing a pair of rabbit ears sticking out from an anthropomorphic rabbit with sunglasses sitting in the back seat alongside a pair of ordinary humans with breathing apparatuses on their mouths and noses. The skins of the pair of humans were far too orange to be considered a normal hue but other than that they looked quite human.

"That's right, these guys were floating in space not too far from your moon. Who knows how they ended up there or why those two are orange, honestly…" Jaco shook his head. "If Tights didn't ask me so nicely over and over again to bring her back home so that she could see her sister, I'd have stayed as far a…"

Jaco froze in mid-sentence after seeing Chayote standing right in front of him, a fact that he had remained oblivious to while he went off on a tangent but noticed the moment that his fury over being forcefully landed subsided somewhat. The Saiyan had been giving him simmering stares but she wasn't lashing out which Jaco knew to be the Saiyan way, which confused him greatly about the nature of their relationship post him leaving her to die and, quite frankly, made him far more frightened than if Chayote just flipped out on him for abandoning her on Slug's cruiser.

"Bulma's been brought back to life. You should drop Tights by West City." Chayote replied after closing her eyes and taking a few breaths to compose herself. She felt like flipping out, she wanted to grab the head of this pathetic little alien and plant it all over the temple, grind it and drag it across every single tile covering the place and then smash it off of the Korin Tower but… She didn't really blame him for leaving her. Heck, had he not done so, he might have gotten Tights murdered alongside him which wouldn't have been any better to anyone.

It would have just made for another chore to gather the Dragon Balls, just another distraction to Chayote amongst all too many she had on her plate already.

"Huh? Oh… Okay… So… I assume that this boy here is the new Kami of Earth then?" Jaco pointed at Upa.

"Kami-in-training." Mr. Popo corrected the alien policeman.

"Ah… I see… I guess this one's a bit more gung-ho about protecting his planet, I'll make sure to let you know when I plan on inspecting the planet or scoop up some prisoners off of it then." Jaco scratched his cheek while giving Upa's serious look a goofy and slightly intimidated stare in return. "In the meantime, I found this bunch floating in space, I assume they must be ones of yours. Scooping people floating in space up is a part of the code of ethics for a Super-Elite of the Galactic Patrol!"

"Super-Elite?! Whoa! You must be super-strong!" Goku rushed up to Jaco while the alien policeman posed in front of the Earthlings. Goku's tail flapped and wiggled beside him in excitement, Chayote knew that motion, it was likely to only be followed by a fight to sate the hunger it represented.

"Huh…? You're… Another Saiyan… Aren't you?" Jaco dropped his jaw and leaned back, intimidated by the enthusiastic approach of yet another fearsome member of the violent space warriors.

"Don't bother, Kakarot. This guy's all talk. He's weaker than Raditz was when you fought him." Chayote grunted and shook her head in disappointment.

"Oh, I see… That's too bad…" Goku sighed and shook his head. "Don't go around calling yourself super-elite and stuff if you're some sort of a weakling then…"

"Ah… I see… I apologize for the confusion…" Jaco bowed a pair of times in rapid succession, looking rather chipper about the fact he had just dodged out of a clash against another Saiyan who looked far more willing to bring his fists raining down upon him than the last one from Earth he had met.

"Oh, hey, it's those guys!" Goku pointed at the rabbit with the shades. "I completely forgot about you guys! You were on the moon, weren't you!?"

"On the… Moon?" Chayote turned to Goku before her eyes widened up in shock. "B-But Muten Roshi destroyed the moon once…"

"Yeah, so one time a beam came from the Earth and popped the moon once, see? We wents floatin' around in space, see?" the rabbit wearing shades and a martial arts uniform with the kanji reading "Rabbit" on it explained. "That's 'till this 'ere guy scooped us up, see?"

"It's crazy that you guys survived out in space for so long!" Chiaotzu gasped and covered his red cheeks with his hands. "Why were you on the moon, to begin with?"

"I kinda put them there…" Goku stroke the back of his head while chuckling with an innocent flush of red on his cheeks. "They were behaving really bad so I put them on the moon so that they wouldn't hassle everyone and turn them into carrots."

"That's right, those guys are some really bad guys. They once terrorized an entire village, turning people they didn't like into carrots." Yamcha crossed his arms over his chest and gave the Rabbit Mob alongside its leader a mean look. "If you're a Galactic Patrolman, or whatever, may as well take those guys to a space prison, or wherever you keep bad guys in."

"Wait, what?! Turn people into carrots!? Forget that! I'm out!" Jaco fumbled back from his spaceship before making a goofy gesture for the Rabbit Mob and their boss to get out of his vessel. "He's your problem, you deal with him!"

"Jeez, I didn't realize that the Galactic Patrolman is such a wussy…" Krillin squinted at Chayote who just shook her head with embarrassment, somehow she ended up being affiliated with this guy in everybody's mind as if he was her friend, or something, which in terms ruined her reputation at the same time in the eyes of everyone else.

"Don't even get me started…" Chayote grumbled out, fearing that any dreams for a potential career as a fearsome and loyal soldier of any kind of space army would be permanently sealed off to her now that people saw her around this guy or, at the very least, considered them acquaintances.

"I mean… He's too small-time for a serious Galactic Justice-Keeping Organization such as the Galactic Patrol! Leave alone a Super-Elite such as myself!" Jaco struck a few poses again, feeling mighty proud by the fact that he washed his hands away from the troublesome Earthling criminal.

"So this is God's Temple, huh? A nice joint, see?" the rabbit with shades looked around. "I think we'll takes it, see?"

"What's this asshole's name?" Chayote turned to Goku.

"Ummm… Rabbit Who Turns People Into Carrots." Goku replied, leaning back on his arms, apparently taking the rabbit's threats with as little seriousness as Chayote was taking them with.

"Why did I ask you, of all people, Kakarot. Yamcha, what is this guy's name?" Chayote turned to Yamcha with an irritated expression after what she thought to be yet another case of Goku fumbling his way through words and names.

"Umm… Well… Goku got it right, he's actually called Rabbit Who Turns People Into Carrots…" Yamcha scratched his cheek, looking embarrassed. If one's name was so stupid it embarrassed other people solely because of the fact they were pronouncing it, that was a problem in of itself.

"Tsk… What a mouthful. I'll just call you Rabbit Carrot, or whatever. Look, you've got a unique chance to scatter your mob and start a new life here. We've got no time to take you to the moon, or wherever, mostly because we might end up blowing it up again and then we'll just feel bad when we remember you guys." Chayote warned the mobsters but the rabbit just turned to Tights and wrapped his arm around her, extending the other one over her head.

"Gives it up, see? Or the girl gets it!" he threatened the folks.

"Eek!" Jaco leaned back, considering this situation as one that has successfully gone tits up. "Why do these things always happen to me?! What's wrong with this damn planet!?"

"Can you turn her back if Rabbit Carrot turns Bulma's sister into a carrot?" Chayote wondered after looking at Upa.

"I think so…" Upa shrugged. "If I had to guess, he's probably working with some manner of Magic Materialization, which just happens to be the specialty of a Kami."

Before Chayote could proclaim her excitement and dispatch of the Rabbit Carrot in a way she saw fit, a loud pop made her turn her head back at the developing situation at hand and she saw Rabbit Carrot frozen in place and twitching in pain. A faint trail of smoke lingered over his head. One of the orange-skinned Rabbit Mob members held a gun pointed at the back of Rabbit Carrot's head, once the rabbit fell off the ship and planted on his face and the bullet hole in the back of the Rabbit's head became more apparent, the outcome of this deadlock became self-evident.

"Y-You bastard… Not even a second back on solid ground and he's already causing trouble!" the frightened orange-skinned man mumbled out. His voice was high-pitched, his tone was weak, he looked and felt punier than even a normal human which was of no surprise, given that he had spent what might have been years floating in space. "Say whatever you will, I'm not going back floating in space and eating space rocks and garbage that this asshole turns into carrots for my entire life!"

"We ate poop…" the second one fell on his knees and burst into tears. Tights, who looked as if she had absolutely no idea of what was going on, except for the slight fright for when the fuzzy bunny grabbed her from behind and tried touching her on the forehead inappropriately, began patting the poor man on the shoulder and comforting him. "He turned our own poop into carrots and we ate it all… This bastard had it coming, we give up! Just don't put us back on the moon!"

Chayote felt a puny Ki signature still emanating from Rabbit Carrot, it was impressive that this anthropomorphic animal could survive being shot in the back of his head with his puny power level but his potential for magical abilities might have granted him a greater vitality as well. It was either that or he was just that damn lucky.

"We'll take him with." Chayote decided. Everyone turned to her with objecting stares, Upa was the one who focused on a whole different part of her declaration.

"Taking him with? Where?" he wondered.

"Your last bit of training before the trials, Jaco, you can take these Earthlings to West City and let them go, they've clearly suffered enough and you're headed that way in either case, if you're bringing Tights home. I'm sure that a Super-Elite can handle a little bit of delivery service." Chayote put her arms on her hips as she gave Jaco a blaming stare as if implying he owed her and Earth that much, at least.

"Okay…" Jaco whistled with his lips turning to the side, in an expression of self-proclaimed innocence and oblivion of any sense of blame that Chayote was blackmailing him with. "Leave it to me!" he struck a heroic pose before jumping into his spaceship and blasting off.

"Training? You said training, didn't you?" Goku ran up to Chayote. "What kind of training is it? If Piccolo Jr. won't be any trouble, I wanna do it too!"

"It would be useless to you or me. It's only something Upa can do and use. It's not training for the muscles but training for his heart." Chayote explained. "That being said, I'd be thankful if you lent Upa your Kinto, Kakarot."

"Kinto? I'm not sure why but fine… Kinto!" Goku called out for the magical cloud that hurled up and stopped in front of him obediently. "You're gonna carry Upa around for a while, 'kay?"

Seeing how the cloud did not respond, both Goku and Upa turned to Chayote for further instructions for the training that she meant for Upa to complete before undertaking his trials to finally become Kami. Mr. Popo smiled, he must not have had any questions about Chayote's intentions.

"Alright, Upa, hop on." Chayote pointed at the cloud. "This is the first step, if you can't do this, there's no way to even attempt the Sudden Death Step."

"The… Sudden Death Step?" Krillin paled out.

"This makes me glad that Chayote's not training me…" Yamcha whispered to Tenshinhan and the two rivals shared a smirk.

Without getting too worked up over the entire affair, Upa hopped atop of the magical cloud. Kinto rustled like disrupted water, shifting about to maintain the weight of the young man riding it but Upa did not plummet through like most trying to ride it did.

"Alright then, to Baba's Palace we go." Chayote nodded and took off, leading the way for Upa to follow.

"Ah… Fortuneseller Baba's Palace… I see…" Goku smiled. "Chayote was right, that test would have been pointless to me."

"Eek! She took the Rabbit Carrot with her!" Krillin pointed at the empty spot of the God Temple grounds where the dispatched rabbit had laid previously.

"Let's just hope that he doesn't recover mid-flight and cause trouble then." Tenshinhan closed his eyes and nodded. The three-eyed martial artist turned around and began making his way back into the temple.

"Huh? Where are you going, Tenshinhan?" Goku wondered.

"Isn't it obvious? Even if Piccolo Jr. is no longer a threat to us, we've spent so much time training in God's Temple that at this point it would be a waste not to see which one of us is stronger. The 23rd World Martial Arts Tournament is just a year away, soon enough you're going to be busy with married life, this is our best chance to finally overtake you as martial artists." Tenshinhan raised his fist up with a bold statement.

"Oh, that's right!" Krillin smiled, crouching with excitement.

"As if!" Goku smirked. "I'm not sure what you meant with all that married life stuff but… I'm not married yet. I can still train just as hard!"

Chi-Chi observed Goku, Krillin, Yamcha, and Tenshinhan dashing off toward various mystical facilities that God's Temple was equipped with to train. Chiaotzu floated off by Tenshinhan's side as well. The young woman pressed her knuckle to her chest before looking up to Goku's back and dashing after him. That Saiyan woman told her that showing initiative and becoming powerful was the only way to get Goku's attention. She didn't need to say that, Chi-Chi saw it with her own eyes when that Saiyan walked out of the Room of Space and Time.

While the men took off toward the room with dark gloom and golden clock patterns filling it, Chi-Chi took a different turn and rushed to an old, wooden door with a golden frame and handle. That Saiyan woman had Goku's attention the whole time after leaving this room, that meant that if Chi-Chi became as powerful as that space lady, Goku would notice her and start taking his promise to marry her more seriously too.

The blinding whiteness and absence of sound or smell that hit her face when Chi-Chi opened the door leading up to the Room of Space and Time took the young woman by surprise. It took a recollection of everything she was doing this for to gather the strength necessary to take the first, bold steps inside. Goku patted her crotch when the two were children, they were bound to marry each other from that day forth. If becoming strong was the way to make sure that she became his wife and got his attention, no amount of hardship was going to stand in between the goal of taking that crude boy as her husband!

* * *

**Author's Note: Okay, so it's absolutely canon that Monster Carrot (who is, more correctly, literally called Rabbit Who Turns People into Carrots) survived both destructions of the moon and just floated in space, alongside his mobsters, which makes little to no sense but it's Toriyama's word and that word is law, as far as I'm concerned :D**

**Had to stretch that suspension of disbelief as thin as it gets to make this work but I think it kind of fits in good. I just wanted a bit more conclusive end to this particular storyline than "they were just floating in space after the Moon got destroyed" and maybe answer some questions which might naturally rise from that plotline. In any case, it's just a minor side story in the whole intermission period between the Grand Tour and... The thing that comes next.**


	87. Birth of a Kami, End of the God Trials

"Whoa, look at the giant queue! Baba's business must be booming!" Upa noted while pointing at the giant mass of fighters that indeed looked greater than Chayote could ever recall it being.

Upa leaped off of Kinto alongside Chayote who swooped down and landed by the queue of impressive-looking fighters. As tall and brawny as most of them were, the unexpected landing of the pair appeared to scare their underwear off of them with the nearest one with a bald head and thick mustache shrieking like a little girl. Then again, the general atmosphere of Baba's Palace supported that sort of fear for unnatural occurrences and ghost haunting and the sort, provided that Ghost Usher was a wispy spirit himself.

"Greetings, Chayote-san and Upa-san!" Ghost Usher shook his stumpy arm and floated up to the pair, gently leading them through the crowd and into the passageway to where Fortuneteller Baba might have seen them.

"Business is pretty busy, isn't it?" Chayote voiced the general impression of the matters to Ghost Usher.

"Well… Yes. With the World Martial Arts Tournament being not too far off, plenty of martial artists are looking for great places to train and test their skills. Few of them know that this place can be more dangerous than the tournament itself." Ghost Usher replied with a polite tone while chuckling to himself after the final remark.

Having spent more than their fair share of time in this palace training and learning all sorts of things, Chayote and Upa knew that Baba must have been occupied with a group of fighters to lead through their perilous attempt to challenge her own five warriors for a free divination. As odd as it seemed, Chayote couldn't sense five distinct Ki in the vicinity.

"Does the old lady have trouble finding fighters? There are only three here worth fighting for her." Chayote let her observation be known to the Ghost Usher.

"Well… Sadly, this might be a factor for why the business is booming at the moment – Baba-sama only has three fighters working for her at the moment. She'd love to have you fight for her again, Chayote." Ghost Usher smiled after making the suggestion despite looking quite desperate after explaining the reason for the lack of notable Ki signatures in the area.

"Just three? That's horrible!" Upa covered his mouth. "Although… I don't see any fighters passing Mummy Man anyway."

"Yes. Sadly, Devil Man has passed on back to Hell not too long ago and with Kami being gone too, Baba-sama's access to the Otherworld has been made quite difficult as he often served as a middle-man between Baba-sama and King Enma." Ghost Usher sighed.

"The old devil kicked the bucket?" Chayote repeated as she struggled to believe it.

"I'm afraid so… Someone attacked him while he was shopping and killed him. It's hard to say who or why might have done it but… We take solace only in the fact that Devil Man has returned to the place he yearned to come back to, even if it is as an inhabitant…" Ghost Usher said.

"There aren't many capable of killing him. He did win the World Martial Arts Tournament twice so maybe one of Demon King Piccolo's runts offed him?" Chayote wondered. An uneasy core of chaotic boiling furled down in her gut, a certain spark of unease. Despite it hardly seeming like an immediate concern, Chayote felt like she wanted to bring the old-horns back. He was the only demon she ever felt fond of.

"That's impossible. The others resurrected everyone killed by Demon King Piccolo and his goons when the Dragon Balls turned active again. Someone else must have done it." Upa pointed out.

The soon-to-be Kami had a point there. Had Tambourine or Demon King Piccolo himself killed off Devil Man for being a champion of the World Martial Arts Tournament, Devil Man would have already come back to life. Then again, would the Demon King have even gone after Devil Man when the latter was just as much a demon as he was a martial artist? The shriveled up Namekian seemed a bit more focused on weeding out Earthling threats first. It was unlikely he'd have gone after Hellions too, especially when there was just one of them and he was just visiting.

"Maybe he didn't want to return back to life? If he had gone down back to Hell, it's likely that he wouldn't want to come back and break his back working for Baba." Chayote ran her hand through her hair, trying to piece that puzzle together as something about it just felt off. "Damn… Old-horns was just who I wanted to see."

"And why's that? Didn't you miss your old friend Fortuneteller Baba at all?" Baba's squeaky, ancient voice ran crooked, bony nails through the harp strings, instilling a chill into the backs of everyone that heard it. Provided, of course, that said backs weren't battered and broken like those of the defeated fighters leaving the palace alongside the old crone.

"Baba-sama!" Upa bowed in front of the old lady while the old crone's eyes glittered like rubies, watching the soon-to-be Kami bowing in front of her. Chayote didn't even need to ask why the fortuneteller had so few problems letting her apprentice and assistant off to train and become Kami – he'd be her plant in the divine plan, while the old woman already pretty much did whatever she pleased, she did so with Kami's permission, or rather, refusal to deal with her insolence. Nobody in the Otherworld wanted to deal with this crone, which was why they compromised with her and let her have her way, feeling thankful that the bothersome woman didn't ask for anything too much. Just a deadman here and there, just for one day to protect her own priceless labor from being taken advantage of.

"I wanted the Devil Man to blast Upa with his Devil Mite Beam. If even the Devil Mite Beam wouldn't work on him, he'd have no trouble passing the Kami Trials." Chayote sighed in irritation that yet another stick got stuck deeper in her wheels than she could pull it out from.

"But… Don't you know the Devil Mite Beam too?" Fortuneteller Baba raised an eyebrow, stretching out her wretched face in ways that it was not meant to be stretched and misshaping one of the sides of her face by having the eye bloat out, compared to the other.

"Mine's still garbage. Back when I left for the tournament my Ki control was too wobbly for it to come out consistently and even if I could pull it off, it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as the real deal. I doubt I could make enemies explode as Devil Man could." Chayote groaned, scratching the back of her head. She was so bad at using that technique that she'd rather avoid facing the fact she even knew its basic concepts.

"Well, do you want to have my little Kami apprentice blow up, you nincompoop!?" Baba croaked out with an inquisitive tone.

"I mean… I guess not. But it won't be the same still…" Chayote sighed. "Though, I guess, if Devil Man's gone, there's no other way, is it?"

"So what you're saying is… Upa-chan's training is almost complete? He's about to face the spirits of the old Kami in the Divine Sage Realm?" Baba seemed excited by that information leak, no doubt because she couldn't wait to exploit the poor boy by guilt-tripping him into transferring entire handfuls of dead martial artists under her employ to help her stay lazy and rich while getting no actual divination done.

"That's right! And it's all thanks to you and the mystical training you've put me through, Baba-sama!" Upa clenched his little fists and bowed in front of his old mentor a pair of times. "All the divine matters and magic came off far easier than it would have. I might have never been able to pick up some things had it not been for the herbs and shortcuts you've taught me in mastering magic and mysticism."

"Ah… There you go, youngin, making this old crone's cute cheeks flush red… I just hope that when you're sitting atop of that temple, all high and mighty, you won't forget the handful of ash and bone dust that brought you up there. You wouldn't do that, would you?" Baba played her cards just right, she was known to do that but there was a certain fond spot in Chayote's own heart for this floating granny.

"Alright then…" Chayote took a few steps forward and turned back to Upa, placing her extended fingers by her temple before positioning her hands in front of her in a triangular position, not too much different from how Tenshinhan performed his Kikoho. Sparks of violet lit up with jolts of lightning passing down Chayote's entire body, her Ki was far more powerful than Devil Man's though he channeled it far better so there was still a question as to which one performed the technique better.

Chayote had never succeeded in doing anything but wounding the enemy with it, she could never expand the negative Ki enough to make the enemy outright blow up as Devil Man intended it.

"Devil Mite Beam!" she chanted out while extending her fingers forward and letting the beam spiral on as it traveled at Upa. It was a slow technique too. If there were no inhibitions on space, any opponent worth their salt might have dodged it as well. Devil Man could have manipulated its course, expanded the range of the spiral it traveled in to have it cover more ground but Chayote was glad about just pulling it off in the first place. Even that used to only happen from time to time and demanded more time to channel the technique than it was acceptable.

Upa let out a light "Oomph" when the beam hit him head-on and encompassed him entirely. Chayote closed her eyes and tried to focus, find any hints of evil inside this young man, illuminating his spirit for any traces of fear, anger, hatred, jealousy or aggression, anything negative that could have been expanded and blown up. Having felt a lump of something, Chayote extended her fist and clenched it, wondering if it would make one of her best Earthling friends pop.

A pop did come out, though it was from the puff of smoke of the technique dissolving around Upa while the young man looked around, curious if anything had happened at all.

"Well… Was this your performance issue or is the boy truly pure of heart?" Baba wondered.

"Hard to say… I don't think I did the technique wrong, it came out now better than it ever has and… Nothing. Upa could ride Kinto no problem so I'd say… You're ready…" Chayote smiled and nodded at Upa, her excitement seemed to resonate in Upa's own heart too so he laughed out in return.

"Heh… I see now what my senile brother sees in these trivial matters. Pride in one's youngins does feel a bit warm and fuzzy, maybe I'll establish a school of my own, Fortuneteller Baba's School of Seeing-All…" the old lady sprayed saliva from her extended tongue as if spitting at such an idea though she soon returned to the smile that twisted her shriveled face again.

"Alright then, I think you're as ready as you will ever be!" Chayote nodded at Upa with a smirk. "Time to make you into a Kami then, if those old spirits refuse you, then to Hell with all of them."

* * *

"So, how'd it go?" Mr. Popo asked with a troubled face when Upa and Chayote landed on the God Temple and waved Kinto off. The genie was looking for signs of what to take from their trip but he could find nothing concrete until Chayote shrugged her shoulders and mustered up a nod.

"Take him to the trials. He's as ready as he'll ever be." She declared.

Of course, saying just this much was putting it lightly though what else could Chayote have said? Mr. Popo didn't know Devil Man or cared about him too much and Goku, alongside the rest of the Dragon Team, was off training.

"What will you be doing? The Room of Spirit and Time is taken for now but you can try it tomorrow." Mr. Popo wondered while Upa approached him and took his position by his side.

"Really? Who's taking it?" Chayote wondered.

"That girl you've brought onto the tower. She said she wanted to become strong to get Son Goku's attention and she was the weakest amongst everyone here so I thought it would be a good idea to let her catch up." Mr. Popo smiled. It was tough to say if he was genuinely happy about his decision since this smile was his neutral state. It was when that smile was absent that Mr. Popo's expressions and therefore the situation at hand required analyzing. "A person can only enter the room twice in their entire life so I'd make that visit count if I were you."

"Wait, what!?" Chayote dropped her jaw. "You mean I spent a whole year of my training just teaching Upa and looking out for Piccolo Jr.?"

"Don't worry, when I become Kami I'll make sure to modify the room so you can visit it more times." Upa nodded, looking as if he just couldn't contain himself.

"You better… You owe me." Chayote crossed her arms and looked away before looking back at Upa and smirking to his back as Mr. Popo took the young man to the black door that molded perfectly into the night-colored hallway that it stood in. The Saiyan would have wished the young man good luck but he wouldn't have heard it. She'd have liked to accompany him too but this was something he was meant to do by himself, plus, the Divine Sage Realm sounded like one of those places where only Gods and their attendants were allowed in.

* * *

"So this place is the Divine Sage Realm?" Upa wondered, his eyes scurried around the seemingly infinite vastness located inside. In that way it looked similar to the Room of Spirit and Time, except where the former was infinitely bright, white and inhospitable, the Divine Sage Realm was covered in a thick, grey mist but its skies looked like the clearest and most serene night's sky that Upa had ever seen. The clouds that might have obstructed the sky lingered by the ground, making it impossible to see what one was stepping on.

"That's right. This is where all Kami go when they die." Mr. Popo pointed out. "This place hosts all of their spirits and they are the only ones that can judge who can become Kami. Only those that are Kami, wish to become Kami and their attendants or beings of higher divine order are allowed inside. It is a place of great sanctity and must not be disturbed unless the case involves a serious matter."

"Even when on the final step of becoming Kami, I'm still learning…" Upa snickered. "Thanks, Mr. Popo, for everything so far and for being alongside me now."

"I look forward to serving you in the future," Mr. Popo nodded his head.

"A mortal has entered the Divine Sage Realm! Why!?" a voice mighty in volume and strict in tone resonated throughout the place, making the serene and majestic night's sky turn blood-red as all the stars blinking up above died out and surrendered to the violent furl of crimson. Dark shadows rose from the obscurity of the mist and formed titanic, humanoid shapes of cloaked men with partings only to display their eyes – the mirrors to their soul that, at the moment, seemed empty.

Yet Upa didn't think they were empty, that these holes were just holes, the view in the eyes of the spirits of the Kami from the past reflected the sky, therefore the state of this room and that was what those holes signified. The fact that this room was entirely a mirror of the souls of the Kami of the past.

"I am no mere mortal, I come here to take my Kami trials!" Upa yelled out at the rising behemoths of smoke and clouds, his arms twitched to reach behind his back for his tomahawks but they then relaxed when he remembered that the Divine Sage Realm was no place for violence. Only judgment. And only Kami were allowed to cast theirs.

"You speak thusly but… Your predecessor is not here, is he?" one of the rising figures of past Kami asked.

"Indeed, if current Kami is alive, you cannot succeed him as Kami." The one to the left of the observant past Kami added.

"I am sorry but… The current Kami is not alive anymore…" Mr. Popo declared with a shaking voice. He had gone through quite the journey and suffered an enormous loss, though it was only through that torment that the power to utter those words came to him. "The current Kami is neither alive or dead. He has become one with a demon he gave birth to in order to save the world from him. In becoming a part of King Piccolo again, he made the demon's heart soften and helped humans save their own world. Earth now needs a new Kami."

"Hmmm… Indeed, if Mr. Popo says that Kami is no more… He is a faithful servant that has served many of us with unseen devotion that might not be repeated by anyone else." One of the past Kami spoke with a softer tone. Clearly, whoever this Kami was, had great care for Mr. Popo and felt grateful for the attendant's service.

"This cannot stand!" the first of the Kami to speak insisted, his cloud began turning darker and spreading wider, attempting to obstruct the redwood hues of the rest. Crackles of lightning began emerging all over the spreading storm while blizzard sprayed from its reach, pelting at Upa and Mr. Popo with the might of snowfall unseen anywhere else in the entire cosmos. "If the Kami is not dead, we cannot select a new Kami!"

"But if the current Kami is one with a demon, does that not mean that his heart is one with evil? Only a pure-hearted person can become and be Kami. There might not be a precedent of a Kami being selected while the current is in a state where they are neither living nor dead, but there is a precedent of Kami becoming evil and needing to be replaced. I suggest that we permit the God Trials in this case." Another Kami spoke up, spreading his own purifying influence against the furious spirit and soothing its wrath upon the entrants to the Divine Sage Realm.

"Very well…" the first Kami relented. "Let us then see if your heart is pure and fosters no evil."

"Be advised, young one, that if your heart does foster evil, you may still cleanse it and come forward. Your predecessor has done so." The Kami that has soothed the grouchy first one spoke up once more.

The wrathful Kami rose above its peers and black jets of storm clouds fractured the calming skies, dyeing them black. A divine thunderbolt pierced the heavens and struck Upa, the jolt was so mighty that it lifted the boy off the ground as it attempted to crash at the core of all wickedness inside him. Upa examined his hands and looked around, despite being utterly consumed by the divine shock, he felt not a single ounce of the jolt.

"Remarkable. Humans have trouble achieving purity and yet this one is as pure as it gets." The wrathful Kami sounded impressed by the entrant he had previously dismissed.

"It's no surprise, Upa and his father have served as protectors of the Sacred Land of Korin, they've devoted their entire lives to see to it that no evil wanders into our hallowed grounds." Mr. Popo looked at Upa with pride while the native boy landed on both his feet after the divine thunderbolt stopped cradling him and dispersed.

"Very well, then. Your final trial as Kami begins. If you draw the Kami symbol onto your clothes, signifying your exalted status – your godhood is granted." A Kami of a feminine-sounding voice declared.

"Huh…" Upa looked around. "What a weird trial…"

And yet… The more he looked around, the more troublesome he found the assignment. Try as hard as he could, he couldn't make out a thing below his knees because of the thick shroud swallowing up him whole. Upa bent his knees and began scanning the floor of the realm with his hands.

"What's wrong?" Mr. Popo wondered.

"I can't find a brush…" Upa complained. "How will I paint the symbol?"

"That's right, youngin, this realm stretches out into oblivion and you will not find a single pen, pencil, crayon or brush in its entirety. Does that stop you from claiming your status as Kami?" the granny-Kami wondered.

"Nope, I guess I'll just conjure up one…" Upa shrugged and extended his hand. A crackle of golden lightning formed around his hands but once it faded away, there was only a flaccid donkey tail in Upa's hands.

"Oh my!" Mr. Popo covered up his mouth.

"Hurry up, boy, before we reconsider…" one of the Kami that has remained silent up until that point spoke up.

"R-Right, sorry!" Upa blushed and placed the donkey tail under his belt before removing his tomahawks and raising them over his head. A powerful jolt of divine lightning came down, drawing strength from the Divine Sage Ream itself as Upa crashed the conjoined blades at the floor before him, splitting the shroud that had covered it for just a brief moment.

Upa browsed the ground but couldn't find a brush either. This was embarrassing, he had spent all this time training with Chayote and he was able to do all sorts of magical tricks, maybe it was just the atmosphere of this realm that inhibited him from effectively materializing objects but… No. He needed no excuses, they wouldn't help him now.

Upa grabbed the handle of his tomahawk and clutched at the tip of the blade hard. He removed his vest and placed it onto the ground. Upa placed his hand over the vest, feeling where its center would have been as the shroud made it impossible to tell for certain.

"Huh… Mr. Popo, can you help me guide my hand?" Upa wondered.

"Wh-What!? Why?" Mr. Popo jumped up in shock.

"I… I can't read or write… You see…" Upa laughed out.

"Ah… Very well…" Mr. Popo nodded and dragged Upa's bleeding hand across the jacket, leaving a bloody stain on it. Upa was well aware that would not do but he could transform blood into paint and shape it better using his divine powers much better than trying to conjure up a brush out of thin air. He raised his jacket in front of him and dragged his bleeding hand across the vest, just inches shy from touching it. And thus the miracle came alive – what was previously just a bloody stain roughly in the shape of the Kami kanji on the back of Upa's leather vest was now a perfectly dyed Kami symbol.

"I still have a lot of places to grow but with Mr. Popo's aid, with the aid of the humans I seek to protect, I will do any task I must as Kami! I swear it!" Upa declared with a determined face as he held his vest in front of the past Kami all of whom examined his signature made in blood.

"What the boy lacks in talent and power, he compensates with potential and devotion, it seems…" the Granny-Kami dispersed into a shapeless shroud and began whirling around Upa while the boy felt a mighty surge of Ki leaving his body. The power he had never previously even felt being there.

"Well, well… What a showoff, it takes many to awaken the divine power within a person. Very well, I shall too add my signature into the ritual!" another Kami dispersed and Upa began feeling more and more Ki that he had never before sensed flowing through him. The power that felt divine, not in its might or quantity but its majestic and exalted essence.

Upa's performance in the trials had earned more and more of the past Kami submitting to the ritual until the aura brimming around Upa became the color matching that of raging fire while miniature twinkles of stars glimmered all around it.

"You did it, Upa, you've become a Kami now! The God Ki has been awakened inside you!" Mr. Popo cheered as the power of unity with the entirety of the Divine Sage Realm had faded away as quickly as it brimmed up, leaving Upa with nothing except the feeling of grandeur and exaltation, having become one with something greater than himself.

It didn't take long after the birth of the new Kami for the remaining year until the next World Martial Arts Tournament to pass and the time for everyone to show off the fruits of their training to come again.

* * *

_**Author's Note: Some of you might find issue at the fact that Kinto can travel higher than the Korin Temple. It's true that Korin has claimed that the Korin Tower is the highest that the Kinto can go and some fans had assumed that was because Kinto is a cloud and the God Temple was shown to be above the clouds but that is just a fan theory and speculation at best. All that we know about traveling onto the God Temple via unnatural means is that both Korin and Kami have methods of preventing that if they deem it necessary. It is, therefore, my stance that Kinto is no ordinary cloud and it can rise above the layer of natural clouds if needed, especially when the anime depicts the characters riding it going over the clouds many times, and it is indeed the magic of Kami or Korin that would prevent one from taking the cloud up their temple, which is what I believe Korin meant when he said to Goku that the Kinto wouldn't take him there. **_

_**Anyways, look forward to the next arc, I hope you liked the story so far. It won't be an exact retelling of the 23rd World Martial Arts Tournament sadly, as I'm not too fond of most of that arc anyway. The only parts of it I find valuable are the marriage between Goku and Chi-Chi and the final match, all of which I can still promise without compromising the tournament too much. I hope you can forgive me of taking some... Liberties with the tournament. You'll all know what I meant by that soon :D**_


	88. Reunion Under a Rainy Sky

"This damned rain, honestly…" a middle-aged man complained, peeking at the gloomy sky through the edge of his umbrella. "Been goin' on since October, it's all doom and gloom like that."

"Oh, stop complaining, you sound like a grumpy geezer or something," his female companion scolded the man while the two walked past a bald old-timer that looked rather troubled by the choice of words of the passing-by lady and was about to object when the blue-haired woman by his side interrupted him.

"If they don't hurry up, they'll be late." Launch looked around while clutching to her umbrella. The May weather was warm though the rain hadn't really stopped since the clouds had drowned out the sky. These whole past six months it's been drizzle or full-on rain the whole time. Even when the rain did subside for a blink, there was no time at all for a little bit of sunlight to penetrate the dark shrouds.

"Haven't they been training with Kami himself? With this lousy weather and being late to the tournament, honestly… Just what kind of a guy this Kami is, exactly?" Muten Roshi sighed. A heavy hum distracted the pair, forcing Launch to move her umbrella and expose Muten Roshi to some cold droplets behind the collar of his shirt. While the cold sensation normally would have made him quiver, the sight of an actual spaceship over his head made the old man flip out in a bit more comedic manner compared to Launch's more reserved surprise.

"Are we being invaded by aliens!? Have the other Saiyans finally found us!?" Muten Roshi stumbled back staring at a tiny vessel.

"Oh my…" Launch uttered while the spaceship navigated around the passing taxi cars and somehow managed to position itself onto a nearby parking spot, disturbing a taxi driver that shook his fist at the unknown flying object after appearing from the front driver seat window of his vehicle.

With the top of the ship opening up, a blue-faced alien in a violet bodysuit jumped out. Muten Roshi scratched his cheek, confused that what he had been seeing didn't look like a Saiyan at all. He didn't know if any other alien races even knew of Earth, judging from the fact that he had not encountered one since first meeting Goku, he had assumed that wasn't the case.

"How can you be this late when there's no traffic in the skies?" Bulma pressed her knuckles to her hips which her tight, black dress accentuated, pointing her index finger at the troubled blue-faced shorty.

"Jeez, what a nag, you're just like your sister…" the alien grumbled before Bulma and a little taller young woman with short, blond hair performed a synchronized cross straight to the face of the alien driver which sent the poor thing stumbling and reeling back while rubbing his face.

"Don't forget that I've got samples your transmission technology, I can let everyone in the Galactic Patrol know just what kind of Super-Elite they employ. How would they like it if they realized what sort of coward works for them, I wonder?" Bulma winked at the shaking alien.

"N-No way! I thought we had a deal! If everyone back at HQ knows that I've been taken hostage by a pair of powerless Earthling women, they'll never let me hear the end of it!" the alien shook his hands out in front of him.

"Powerless!?" both young women put their dukes up ready to bully their chauffeur some more. Lamenting his fortune, the alien wrapped his arms over his head and sat down, preparing to accept the mildly inconveniencing punishment in store for him.

"Bulma! It's been a while!" Launch ran up to the most curious scene as if she had not just seen an alien park in front of her, blocking off the street for the stream of increasingly frustrated taxi drivers and have her friend appear from its spaceship.

"Ah, Launch, Muten Roshi is here too! Nice to see you, we haven't really met up since the resurrection, huh?" Bulma smiled at the pair and waved to Muten Roshi who was only now accepting this garish scene as a part of his daily reality and began contemplating just how soaked he was by the rain.

"I guess not, all this experience was just too weird, I suppose. Are these your friends?" Launch gave the blonde and the alien a warm look.

"They are, this is Tights, she's my older sister. She's been away for the longest time though she seems to be coming and going lately. This is Jaco, her companion that takes her around the galaxy and helps her to come up with material for her novels." Bulma introduced everybody.

"I wrote the "The Hysterical Rose and Wimpy Policeman: A Space Story", you might have heard of it…" Tights rubbed her wrist by her collar with a proud look on her face.

"Oh, you wrote that? I heard it was doing pretty well! You're impressive!" Launch gasped. "Nice to meet you too, Jaco-san!" she extended a hand for a greeting.

"Wow, you're not a shrill harpy at all…" Jaco observed while thunderbolts cracked behind him in the shape of two outraged young women, ready to pound the self-proclaimed Super-Elite into submission. For someone who feared their temperament, Jaco sure had no reservations about speaking up ill about them.

"That is very impressive indeed, Tights-chan, I wasn't aware that Bulma was related to someone this talented and… Pichi-Pichi…" Muten Roshi was about to let his lesser tendencies overcome him before Bulma switched the object of her beatdown to Muten Roshi.

"What's that supposed to mean, you pervy old-geezer!? I'm a Super-Genius, you know! I've built a spacecraft capable of traversing all the way to Planet Vegeta, wherever that is. Do you know how many decades ahead of Earth technology such a feat is!?" Bulma ground her teeth.

"So, you're interested in the tournament too, Tights-san?" Launch switched the subject by striking up a conversation with Tights.

"Umm… Not really, though Bulma said this tournament tends to get crazy and the potential for a good classical martial arts tale intrigues me. It isn't advised for a writer to just switch genres like that after garnering an audience but I want to try everything once in a while, you know?" Tights voiced her thoughts on the promising prospect.

"Pheh… Earth truly is a planet of uncultured hicks if they grab trash like that off the shelves…" Jaco crossed his arms as if challenging the two sisters to inflict grievous bodily harm upon him. His yellow eyes beamed that challenge out at them at the same time.

"What do you know about culture? Aren't action movies your favorite?" Bulma raised a mocking eyebrow.

"That's right, it's my No. 3 favorite thing in the universe!" Jaco struck a pose.

"I thought…" Tights raised her index finger to object in an inquisitive gesture but then gave up halfway, realizing that this was not something she needed in her life.

"What? Favorite things ever can sometimes change order… It just so happens that I love justice and explosions a bit more now." Jaco objected crossing his arms again.

"So Yamcha isn't with you then?" Muten Roshi asked Bulma.

"No idea where that bum is!" Bulma looked up into the sky with spite. Given how all she knew was the rumors that he was training with Kami, she just sort of blamed the sky and the poor weather on her boyfriend gripes this whole time. "Couldn't care less either!" she tried cutting it short.

"You're clearly lying, the venom dripping from your Gaspean-Dragon mouth suggests you'll kill him the first chance you get…" Jaco observed bluntly.

"If you don't stick to your own business, you might not live to see that!" Bulma flipped out on the overly blunt alien patrolman. "Honestly, while it's nice to have an extra pair of hands and someone with a background of space technology, I don't think I'll miss you at all once you leave."

A gust of wind picked up and blew Muten Roshi's hat right off. The old man rushed to chase after it seeing how it was his only protection from the rain until Launch stopped talking with the blue-faced alien and returned with their only umbrella. A chipper laugh ringed behind his back.

"Yo! Been a long time, sorry 'bout that, old-timer, we were in a bit of a rush…" a young man seated atop of an ancient though well-maintained Persian carpet waved at everyone. Sitting alongside him was a young woman wearing a similar coat to his though of a much brighter shade of blue. The young lady must have been quite fond of this man since she had her arm wrapped around his and kept running her hand over the messy and spiky black hair of the young man.

"Huh…?" Muten Roshi turned at the curious pair while he leaned to pick up his hat. "Are these more of your alien friends, Tights-chan?"

"No, these are Bulma's friends, right? We've met them briefly on that huge tower…" Tights seemed to recall.

"Look, Muten Roshi, I'm really glad you look okay but we really should be registering already. Chi-Chi insisted that we took the scenic route so we kind of soared over clouds and oceans and got chased by dinosaurs and stuff…" the young man jumped off of the carpet and began emoting at Muten Roshi who looked increasingly confused by this youth.

"Chi-Chi? That's Ox-King's daughter's name, isn't it?" Muten Roshi jumped up and ran to the young woman who looked flushed with red, embarrassed that her plus one did not offer her aid in getting off of the magic carpet. "Wow, you've gone along and got all grown up! How is your old man?"

"I haven't seen him whole year, daddy was just fine when I left though without me by his side he's slacking off his training, no doubt." The young woman noted. "Pleased to meet you all. I'm flattered to finally meet the friends of Goku-sa."

"Goku…Sa?" Bulma muttered under her own nose before losing her composure. "You're married to Goku!?"

"Why are you all talking about me while I'm right here?" the young man Chi-Chi arrived alongside with objected standing right next to Bulma, the genius inventor went pale and her head twitched in bewilderment as she faced a greatly grown version of the monkey boy she once knew.

"G-Goku! No way!" Bulma pointed right at Goku, forcing the Saiyan to cross his eyes in order to focus his attention on Bulma's large, red fingernail.

"Jeez, what's wrong with you guys, of course it's me…" Goku crossed his arms looking a bit peeved that everybody was acting so strange.

"Wow, you got so much taller…" Bulma muttered to herself as in her current state she simply lacked the energy to properly exclaim just how surprising all these developments were.

"Guys, seriously, we need to register like… Right now." Goku objected before Chi-Chi jumped off of the carpet and landed on his back, seeing how her husband didn't seem at all interested in helping her get off.

"Hey, there they are!" Oolong's squeaky yet low-pitched voice reached the crew and they turned to meet a pair of familiar faces in Tsuru-Sennin style uniforms yet donning the logo of "Kami" in the middle of their chests. The two shapeshifter pals accompanied Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu both of whom donned Chinese-styled straw hats as well as some straw padding on their shoulders to protect them from the constant downpour going down for the last six months.

"Ah, Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu, these guys took off the day before so of course they'd be here already," Goku smirked at the pair and greeted them with a cheerful salute with two of his fingers. Tenshinhan mirrored the greeting while Chiaotzu just nodded with that signature creepy smile of his.

"Say, isn't that Mr. Popo's magic carpet? The one that can take you anywhere instantly?" Bulma wondered, pointing at the magic carpet that slowly followed after Goku after Chi-Chi jumped off of it and crawled down on the ground from Goku's back.

"Huh? Oh, yeah…" Goku nodded with indifference as if he had just noticed the thing.

"Then how on Earth were you almost late?" Muten Roshi waved his hat beside him to shake off the accumulated rain off of the soaked thing.

"I told you, Chi-Chi wanted to take the scenic route and look at a bunch of things, she asked me to slow down as slow as it goes, to go over the clouds and over the oceans so that we could splash around, she kept wanting to pet the wild tigers and let the dinosaurs chase us around. She keeps telling me I'm childish and immature but, honestly, that was pretty weird…" Goku scratched his head. "Then she unwrapped the turbo off of my head and just threw it away because she said she wanted to feel my hair…"

"A turban, Goku-sa," Chi-Chi corrected.

"That's so romantic!" Bulma kept shaking in excitement.

"Right? Goku-sa has no sense of romance at all, sometimes it's as if we're not even married…" Chi-Chi nodded in agreement.

"What!? Goku got married!?" Oolong flipped out. "No way, how'd you score with a hot chick like that!?"

"That is weird," Bulma objected. "How come this is the first time any of us is hearing about it? How come you didn't invite us to your wedding?"

"Huh? You're welcome onto the God Temple anytime, we figured you'd all be too weak to climb the Korin Tower…" Goku shrugged.

"It's just that when Upa-san became the new Kami, the opportunity presented itself to be married by Kami himself so we went for it. It was a private ceremony but I do intend on convincing Goku-sa into a more extravagant wedding celebration down on the ground level." Chi-Chi began daydreaming herself.

"Hmm? What's there to convince? Just tell him how it is – a wedding is a celebration with a feast involved. Let him eat his fair share and he'll be all over it…" Bulma squinted at the big goof walking and looking ahead all clueless-like.

"Really!?" Goku's jaw dropped. "No way! Chi-Chi, we've gotta do that real marriage thing after the tournament!"

"B-But Chi-Chi has been bugging you about that for months now. You were always the one telling her you don't want to skip training…" Chiaotzu pointed out while Tenshinhan walked alongside him with his eyes closed and a light blush on his cheeks.

"Maybe we should look for a shelter. Those that aren't competing won't be allowed into the premises anyway…" Launch voiced the object of her pondering.

"Really? You'd find us all a spot? That's awfully nice of you, you're an incredibly nice lady!" Jaco observed. Launch sniffled her nose, all this spring rain didn't work too well with her fragile immunity and body strength, it seemed. A wet-sounding sneeze shred through the sudden silence between the present members of the Dragon Team.

"Oy! What's this creepy-looking rat-bastard right here!? I bet yer some sort of a demon, aren't you!? I'll fill ya right up with lead, you dumbass!" Launch, in her blond from, browsed her handbag for a gun but couldn't find one, given her lack of proper demon-slaying weaponry, she employed the next best thing – her bare hands.

"Launch-san hasn't been reacting too well to this weather. It has been giving her frequent sniffles ever since the whole thing started. Just a few hours ago she packed a whole arsenal only to leave it all at the airport when she transformed again." Muten Roshi sighed.

"Y-You're not a nice lady at all! You're the least nice lady out of them all!" Jaco cried out and pulled out his blaster, setting it to a stasis field and paralyzing Launch in place. "That's it, I'm outta here, I got you shrill harpies here like you asked, now I'm out, you're on to deal with this transforming witch on your own!"

Just as he claimed, the Galactic Patrolman dashed to his spaceship and after shrugging off all the of the protests from the stuck taxi drivers that were blocked off by his weird parking choice blasted off into space, forcefully ripping off all the parking tickets stuck to his window and leaving all the elderly policemen of the Papaya Island just tilting their hats and scratching their necks in bewilderment.

"What, he's just gonna take off like that!?" a taxi driver objected.

"Well… He seems to have taken off to space… That's… Kind of… Outside my jurisdiction…" a frail-looking policeman objected. "I'm just two days off my retirement, I don't need no alien trouble right now…"

"A bit too late for that, isn't it?" a young woman of spiky, black hair and a tail politely waggling by her side, accompanied by a long-haired young man with a face covered in scars voiced an observation to the police-man. "Don't worry, member of Earthling authorities, I'll make sure to give that scaredy-cat a proper earful when I next see him."

"Chayote, Yamcha!" an excited shout reached the pair approaching the gate leading into the tournament grounds. They looked up only to see the golden blur of Kinto passing by and a short baldy in yellow, baggy pants and a red jacket landing in front of them with an overjoyed smirk on his face. "So you two hooked up, huh?"

"W-Wait, what!?" Yamcha took a wild step back and switched his attention between Chayote and Krillin, his face completely pale as the oaf feared for his life just because such an outrageous implication was voiced.

"The two of us? Nah, we just trained together for a while…" seeing how calmly Chayote reacted to this question made Yamcha gulp one down in relief.

"Huh? You trained with Chayote?" Krillin's mouth went ajar. The pair stopped to let Chayote walk off a bit out in front of them so that they could exchange a few words. "Are you suicidal!?"

"Well, she was as brutal as you'd think but… If I wanted this tournament to mean something, I had to really push myself harder than ever before." Yamcha declared. "After all, Tenshinhan, Goku, and Chayote all were leagues ahead of me in the last tournament so I couldn't have just did my best and hoped to catch up. I needed to work the hardest I ever could."

"Wow, Yamcha, that's so inspirational!" Krillin cheered his friend.

"Plus, if I ever hook back up with Bulma, this might be my last chance of training in my whole life so better make it count, right?" Yamcha chuckled with a sense of imminent danger lingering down in his chest which made his voice seem a bit unsure of his own future.

"I… Wow, I wish you really didn't say that and ruin that cool vibe you had going…" Krillin shriveled up in disappointment. "Anyway, Goku might start a family life with Chi-Chi too, now that Piccolo Jr. isn't a threat anymore, Chayote's probably gonna go off into space too. This might just be our last good bash together. Let's just enjoy ourselves while we still can."

"You're right," Yamcha nodded. The pair then noticed that the registrations were about to close so the developing events forced them to hurry along. Chayote met the two late birds with a mean-spirited stare from the middle of the line, being a poor receptor of other people's judgment, Krillin just rubbed the back of his head awkwardly and his embarrassed face under the beak of his black cap.

The qualifiers of the 23rd World Martial Arts Tournament were just about to start.


	89. Begin the Tournament of Doom!

Despite the grueling qualifier rounds being next in line for the registered competitors of the World Martial Arts Tournament, the crowds bustled surrounding the ring where the tournament finals were meant to take place. There was no point of them standing around for a pair of hours with their snacks in hand though given how the tournament operated under the sort of early bird gets the worm type rules in terms of audience positions, everyone felt like taking the right position to observe the finals from was of golden value.

"If I might have your attention please, may all of the registered contestants of the tournament enter the stadium. The qualifier rounds will start in a few moments." a short and frail man in a turban yelled out into the microphone.

"Hey, Muten Roshi, did you bring us our uniforms?" Goku wondered, turning for his old mentor.

"What!? We weren't even sure if you guys would show up, the last thing I thought about was your uniforms…" Muten Roshi fixed his shades, looking a bit disappointed in himself for having underestimated the hunger for a competition that the bunch of martial artists who were once his pupils possessed.

"Don't you listen to that old-geezer, he ironed out your tights and got them all neatly placed on yer beds. He's a little softie at heart, ya know!" blond Launch smacked Muten Roshi at the top of his head and churned his belfry. While the facial expression of the honored martial arts master suggested a moderate amount of strain on his neck and enough pain to twist his face, the blush on his cheeks and the goofy grin betrayed what really was on his mind at that moment.

"You did that… Launch-san…" Muten Roshi hummed out.

"Oh… Did I? I guess it coulda been the other me then…" blond Launch scratched her head, abandoning harassing the elderly for a moment.

"Say, isn't it totally crazy how much Goku has grown up?" Bulma turned toward Krillin, Yamcha, and Tenshinhan. Reeling back from another inevitable strike and covering up a beaming black-eye that would take a Senzu to recover before the fighting starts, Yamcha jumped up after being looked at but Bulma's irritated eyes told him that he could have snuck out and gotten himself killed for all she cared.

"I dunno what you mean…" Krillin shrugged.

"Of course you don't…" Bulma shook her head, wrapping her fingers around her temples. "You've spent all this time with him so to you it must look natural."

"Oh… Yeah, I guess…" Krillin laughed out. "Though I'm a bit insulted you haven't noticed how much taller I've grown, Bulma…"

"Haven't any of you noticed how much taller Chi-Chi had grown? She was just a little girl the last time we met…" Yamcha tried contributing to the conversation too but it was the absolute worst thing to say at the absolute worst time. Bulma's deadly stare directed at him dismissed her previous apathy towards the dolt's life and demanded that she'd be the one to take it.

"Anyway… We've gotta go, let's go do our best!" Yamcha pumped his fists with a blush on his cheeks, trying to play the awkward situation he had unleashed off. Luckily for him, he still had a shred of dignity and charisma necessary to pull that off and the meaning behind his words did make everyone move aside from Yamcha's awkward remark.

"Ten-san, let's meet at the finals!" Chiaotzu declared without dropping his doll-like smile, turning at his companion while floating in mid-air.

"I suppose competition is meaningless if your goals aren't ambitious. Let's go for it, Chiaotzu." Tenshinhan nodded to his friend with a subtle tilt to the corners of his lips.

"Go knock 'em dead, Yamcha-san!" Puar cheered on Yamcha.

"Not literally though, huh? That'd get me disqualified!" Yamcha faked out a peal of laughter at his own joke when he noticed that nobody else paid much attention to it. Even Puar just floated about with a smile that was more a warm receptor for his friend's presence rather than a result of his grim joke.

"Remember, Goku-sa, a husband must provide for his family. You can't be a deadbeat who just rides off of his father-in-law's success, you know." Chi-Chi placed her hand on Goku's shoulder, making the young man just put his fist up and bump it at his wife's chest with a gentle nudge.

"Hey…" Bulma approached Chayote from behind while the Saiyan walked toward the stadium, having nobody to cheer on otherwise. "I heard that you were the one to collect the Ultimate Dragon Balls and everything… I just wanted to thank you."

"Oh, hey, you're Bulma, right?" Chayote pointed at the blue-haired genius, prompting a fit of rage to follow her bad joke.

"Don't you "hey, you're Bulma" me!" the young woman ground her teeth while her eyes whited out and it began to seem as if Bulma would enroll in the tournament to take a swing at Chayote herself.

"Right, right… Anyway, there's no use in thanking me. It was this Yajirobe guy who found the Ultimate Dragon Balls and you weren't brought back using them. We used them to restore the Dragon Balls with which you guys got brought back. I wasn't even there for that part…" Chayote shrugged and turned to walk away from her grateful friend.

"When we first met you six years ago, it seemed like you were a bad omen. As a natural genius, I couldn't help but see the potential threat from you. It didn't help the construction of your spaceship that I was afraid you'd return with the army of a space emperor by your side when you left Earth and you seemed like such a mean person back then but… When you really did leave, you came back in time and saved the Earth. I misjudged you, all of us did, to some extent but I really wanted to apologize for that and to thank you for all that you've done for us." Bulma insisted on being heard out.

What a bothersome broad. Didn't she know that she was around everyone and that the others could hear her talk from this close? Judging by the sudden silence that surrounded Chayote's attempts to just walk away and get ready for the qualifiers, they did hear everything that Bulma said and if their lousy smiles were of any indication – they believed it.

"No idea what got into you but… Sure, anytime." Chayote waved Bulma off.

"She must have thought that you'd fly off into space the moment this whole tournament ends so she wanted to let you know," Yamcha spoke up after approaching Chayote inside the stadium.

"If you were so understanding with her, maybe you'd still have a mate." Chayote beamed her eyes back at Yamcha, reminding him who gave him his scars during their training.

"Old-timer is such a tease… After all the training he did by himself, he didn't sign up for the tournament…" Goku stretched his arms out. He wasn't full of it, Chayote did sense a moderate increase in the old man's power level compared to where she remembered his power being, she hadn't really gotten a good sense of it before as her sensory abilities weren't that developed back then but he certainly felt stronger than he should have been.

It did seem like a waste that he didn't sign-up. This was to be their last big bash. Everything had to be thrown to the wall, Chayote wouldn't have minded facing all the weakling Earthlings she's toppled along the way one more time. Even that Chappa guy. Bacterian could stay the hell away though and, judging by the relatively tame smell of sweat in the area being the only source of stench around here, he did just that.

Being able to sense Ki did kill Chayote's excitement some. In the entirety of the qualifier stadium, there wasn't a single notable Ki signature. Everyone of note she had already met. It would make for quite boring finals this way, Goku, Chi-Chi, Yamcha, Krillin, Chiaotzu, Tenshinhan and her would all make it out without any trouble, Yajirobe would make it out too, whomever that guy tried to fool with that mask of his and an attempt to hide his presence by not talking to anyone. Maybe a weakling or two would manage to fit in through sheer luck as well…

"Chayote, Krillin…" a voice that Chayote could recall distracted her. She did note the larger than usual Ki signature though it felt like millennia away from the level of her and the rest of those that trained at the God's Temple.

"Nam, that's a surprise." Chayote exclaimed.

"Somehow I knew that you guys would compete this year. I've come to restock on food and water for my people and since I was in the vicinity, I decided to participate as well." The contestant nodded. "Who knows, maybe I'll be able to catch Goku or you by surprise by grabbing your tails again…"

Nam's eyes froze by Goku's tail-less behind. He blinked a few times in rapid succession before rubbing the back of his head enough to displace his turban, prompting the need to correct it before he could point at Goku and talk to him.

"Say, you're Goku, aren't you?" Nam pointed at the grown-up Saiyan.

"Of all people, he recognizes Goku?" Krillin rubbed the temple of his confused face with his index finger.

"Hmm? Sure am, what's up?" Goku nodded.

"I can't seem to ignore the fact that you are missing your tail," Nam pointed at something that should have been there but wasn't.

"Oh, that was because of an accident. Upa could make things out of thin air so I wondered if he could make things disappear too. He's not too good with his Kami abilities so he demuttonized my tail." Goku pointed out.

"Dematerialized." Chi-Chi corrected him, a role that she was growing accustomed to though, judging by her excitement to play this role, she just liked to be included in the conversation.

"Well, that's it then… I suppose you've got no weaknesses now," Nam chuckled to himself. "Either way, I look forward to the real competition." The martial artist then bowed to the present members of the Dragon Team and walked away closer to the stage where his group was to compete.

It was then that it felt as if though the somber mood had shattered like a wall of thin glass. It was no brick thrown by a stray bandit that shattered it, it was a concentrated laser beam outside. The fragile serenity of the meaningless hustle and bustle of the tranquil audience waiting for the competition to start was murdered and the prime clue of the grisly crime was the tirade of bone-chilling screams outside. The cracking noise of flames was soon to join in.

Nothing needed to be said, Chayote saw the fact that the rest of the Dragon Team sensed the emerging surge of malicious Ki signatures as well. These were no peaceful contestants of the tournament. These were agents of chaos looking to wreak havoc. Though as such they've chosen a curious date and time to enact their assault and begin their bloody rampage of hellish intentions. Some of the fighters felt frightened enough by all the commotion to stay indoors, that was just fine – they wouldn't have lasted a second in either the tournament or the true battle that had found the Dragon Team outside.

The sky was opening up. It had been torn asunder as if it was indeed the thing that was murdered. A grotesque and crackling with dark thunderbolts wound laid stretched out across the heavens as if the murderer had intended to spill the heaven's guts across and make them rain onto the obedient subordinates down below. Chayote knew that foul Ki, it was not a Ki she had learned to recognize but one that etched itself onto her flesh and her spirit. Carved into her body and mind with the blades of humiliation, torture, and defeat.

Demons.

"Can you sense it, Kakarot?" Chayote grunted.

"Yeah, it's Piccolo Jr., no doubt about it." Goku stared at the skies with the same amount of worry for his home planet that Chayote had for Earth's fate though instead of the innate distaste for the demonic bunch, Chayote could identify excitement. Where Chayote hated the guts of all demons for the defeat and humiliation they served her on multiple occasions, Goku saw in them only challenge beyond anything he had ever faced and he loved challenge about the same amount as he loved good food and almost the same as his own wife.

"Piccolo Jr.? It's not just Piccolo Jr. Where is all this coming from!?" Tenshinhan pointed at the massive calamity that continued to ripple and spread wide, the ground underneath their feet began to shake and crumble. There was a tremendous pull toward the gaping void that opened its dreadful jaws in the heavens and it seemed to aim to gobble the entirety of Earth to satiate that hunger.

Chayote turned to her left, racing to meet the Ki signature that had caused this entire madness to begin. It was a floating dwarf, not too much different from the way Chiaotzu operated, though he had the general appearance of demonic filth. Pale, blue skin, pointy teeth, wooden boots, and a cape. Sharp beady eyes very much alike to those of Demon King Piccolo. A murdered corpse of a man with a jarring hole in his chest, whited out eyes and blood tricked down his open mouth.

The beady eyes of this floating demon dwarf were turning red.

"Kakarot!" Chayote growled out but it was too late, the laser beam had taken Goku and flung him into the stadium where the beam had detonated, reducing the entire structure to rubble.

"Demon!" Chayote roared out, there it was again, the rage that she had dreaded back in space. That all-overwhelming sensation that just took her over and forced her to abandon all reason and charge at the enemy, no matter if they were stronger than her or not.

In her blind wrath and the need to carve the carcass of this dead demon, Chayote failed to notice three more demons rushing in from her sides, spinning around her in a combination attack like a living hurricane and throwing fists and feet while flying around her. The mad flurry of attacks helped her ease her rage some and get her body back into control. She'd have thanked those three demons had she not planned on ending them alongside every other demon in the vicinity alongside them.

"A-Amazing! She's blocking their every attack even outnumbered three-to-one." Krillin pointed out.

"No wonder, it's not like those three are much of a match for us," Tenshinhan noted.

"You're right, we've kicked the butt of Demon King Piccolo himself, he was the Demon King, these fools stand no chance." Yamcha found a root of encouragement to hold onto while he picked himself up.

The trio had attempted to close in on Chayote and grapple her but a Kiai blast sent them scattering across the Papaya Island while the Saiyan retreated back into formation with the rest of the Dragon Team. The sound of rumbling wreckage behind her informed everybody that Goku emerged from the wreckage unharmed, patting at his dirty outfit.

"Tsk… You bothersome human, don't presume to be in a position to bully the mighty Garlick Jr.!" a swampy-green shorty that looked somewhat similar to his master in appearance, except for a rather featureless, skull-like nose that made him look like an olive-colored, fur-less bat with red eyes.

"Now, now… Let's all contain our instinct to bash, carve and murder for now." A humanoid demon of periwinkle skin and pointy ears descended from that same tear in the sky, accompanied by a large group of many more demons. A pair of them stuck close by his side – a human-like woman demon of pale skin and long, pointy ears and a large, grey-skinned brute with a Viking helmet and a massive sword over his back.

White the demonlings growling and snarling behind them looked harmless to Chayote, feeling like half of a Saibaman's strength, even one of them would be enough to utterly conquer Earth so the source of absolute terror that was why it felt like it might have been a good idea to not let this slip out from Chayote's mind.

"Humans, my name is Shura. I am a demon from the Demon Realm and I have come to claim dominion over your world." The demon with long, black hair and periwinkle skin declared. He was quite captivating both in his strength and the military might he managed to put together. Although when a Namekian with a much more standard appearance to what Chayote knew Namekians to look like descended by Shura's side, closer even than his two underlings that stood by both of Shura's shoulders, the Saiyan couldn't help but keep her eyes on the absolute behemoth of power that could have only been Piccolo Jr.

"So you're the Demon King now?" Tenshinhan called out to Shura.

"That is correct. With Demon King Dabura gone for centuries and Demon King Piccolo no more – I, Shura reign as the Demon King. While my ascension to this position is less honorable than I would have liked, for I have bested neither Dabura nor Piccolo in battle, I have done what no other Demon King has done before me – I've united all the Demon Tribes and therefore I lay siege upon your realm." Shura declared, spreading his arms out wide and showing off the massive army of demons around him.

"Piccolo… How did you escape the Room of Spirit and Time!?" Goku pointed at the silent Namekian dread that continued to give the Earthlings and Saiyans responsible for the end of his predecessor and his origin intense stares.

"There is more than one exit to the Room of Spirit and Time. You humans wouldn't know that, but there is an exit and a temple for each separate dimension connecting this universe. This young successor of Demon King Piccolo, the previous Demon King, has found the exit to our Demon Realm a few years ago and, given his legacy, I felt responsible to train him and if Mera is my right hand and Gora is my left hand, Piccolo Jr. is the blade of my punishment." Shura looked to Piccolo Jr. with a combination of respectful fear as well as kinship.

"You're right, I don't think I get it…" Goku scratched his head before allowing himself to get serious for a moment. "Are you fine with that though?" Goku turned to Piccolo. "You're way, way stronger than him, you know. You're fine with him treating you as his subject and telling you what to do?"

"Since Demon King Piccolo became one with Kami before his death, his reincarnation is forever bound to Kami's heart. As such, his heart is too wicked to ever become Kami and too godly to ever become a true Demon. He is fated to never be a Demon King like his predecessor. It is Shura's mercy that gave Piccolo's life meaning in the first place." Mera, the female demon by Shura's side answered for her master.

"I'm bored. All this talking is too confusing. I want to kill…" Gora, the oversized brute by Shura's left, behind Piccolo Jr. looked down at his master.

"Very well, I will get to the point then. All you pathetic humans can flee for your lives. My interests rely solely on those of you gathered on this island to fight. The strongest that humans can muster up in terms of resistance, I intend to destroy you. Publically, in front of the people you will serve as champions for so that those I rule over get no bright ideas of trying to resist their dark fate. Back in the Demon Realm, we tend to settle issues in a similar manner – one on one combat. For that reason, invading during the time of this tournament of yours just deemed fitting." Shura explained.

"So what you're saying is that I'll be forced to kill all of you one at a time?" Chayote grumbled out.

"You don't really have a choice. Defeating all of our generals in this tournament is the only way for you to avoid casualties and widespread destruction. If you can defeat us, I will withdraw back to my Demon Realm, my rule at that point would not be a lengthy one but alas, I would not stand much chance ruling over a race more powerful than Demons anyway." Shura answered.

"Okay, so I guess we know what your deal is, obviously, Piccolo Jr. is here for revenge too… But what's that guy's business?" Krillin pointed at Garlick Jr. He raised a fair point, the blue dwarf looked like he was fairly important in the demonic hierarchy too, about as powerful as Shura himself, yet he was neither a Demon King nor did he declare such aspirations.

"When we kill you, maggots, I, Garlick Jr. will become the new Kami of Earth. The position my father was cheated out from by the last Kami!" Garlick Jr. clenched a fist while sneering at Krillin with enough murderous intent to force the baldy onto a back foot.

"Well then, seeing how this pathetic show is no longer about mere martial arts, nor does it cover just one world anymore, I suppose we should call it something different too?" Shura lifted off the ground alongside his subjects and generals and began looming over the humans, cowering and defying alike, as the entirety of the demonic horde moved into the territory of the tournament finals. "Gora, any bright ideas?"

"I don't like thinking up names, I like smashing!" Gora grumbled with a husky tone.

"Perhaps the Tournament of Doom?" Mera suggested.

"Ah, yes… I suppose that does have a ring to it, as well as a certain prophetic significance of the fate foreshadowed to mankind in our hands. I like it." Shura nodded before landing in the center of the ring. "Let the Tournament of Doom begin then!"


	90. Open Dead Zone!

The crowds of unruly demons shuffled, washing out a meek human from amongst their midst. One donning shades and a suit and still clutching to the microphone in his right hand as if it was a blade of righteousness to crave some demons up. Whether it was or wasn't it did not matter. The man clutching to it was far too puny to do such a thing in any case. Even to the measly, malformed weaklings surrounding him and chanting for blood and guts.

"Oh, hey, it's you…" Chayote mumbled, recognizing the tournament announcer.

"Ah! It's all of you guys!" the announcer gasped in surprise but then his voice settled down somewhat, realizing that the only humans crazy enough to not flee upon the first sight of explosive and demonic trouble had been the crew he knew and respected a great deal. "No way! Am I seeing a ghost right now!?"

"Huh?" Krillin took off his cap and scratched his bald head before recalling the fact that made the announcer so frightened. "Oh, yeah… Chayote cashed in a favor and I got to come back to life."

"Well then… I was not aware that was an option…" the tournament announcer took out a hanky from his front suit pocket and wiped the sweat off his face. While the skies remained cloudy and dark, at least the rain had stopped temporarily, making it an easier time for everybody ever since the demons emerged from their hole in the sky.

"Enough chit-chat, human." Shura shut the small-talk down. "You are here because you are an experienced staff member for the World Martial Arts Tournament. We shall require you to oversee the Tournament of Doom in a transparent manner so that there are no questions raised after it as to who truly rules this world."

"Excuse me but… What is going on here?" the announcer turned to the humans for comfort and reason in this troubling time.

"These guys appeared from the sky and started shooting lasers from their eyes. You better do as they say, until Chayote and Goku kick their butts, at least." Bulma advised the announcer, looking mighty uncomfortable by the current situation and the composition of demon-to-human rating in the audience.

"So you want to fight it out fairly then?" Goku asked Shura directly.

"Of course, one on one combat, whatever the rules for the World Martial Arts Tournament are, we will accept them." Shura clutched his fist out in front of him, showing his teeth in displeasure that Goku questioned his honor.

"Are you sure about that?" Garlick Jr. glanced at Shura with a cheeky look. "Your tribe is especially weak to sunlight, isn't it? You're not at full power outside the Demon Realm."

"That is why I've had humans that enjoyed their brief time under Demon King Piccolo's rule do some errands for us and ensure that this planet does not see sunlight as long as we reign supreme." Shura pointed at the gloomy sky. "That way all shall be fair."

"Not really…" Chayote spoke up, demanding the attention of everyone around the ring. "Saiyans possess a transformation under the light of a full moon. Without seeing the sky or the moon, we will not be able to access it."

"That's hardly relevant when the current moon phase is the crescent moon, isn't it?" the announcer pointed out.

"Hey, whose side are you on, exactly!?" Bulma shook her fist over her head, brimming with anger.

"Hey, I was given one task and you told me to perform it to the best of my abilities. I am merely attempting to be a professional here." The announcer pressed his knuckles to his sides and posed proudly.

"That's fine." Goku spun his arm around warming up. "I would hate to fight under the sunlight anyway, I wanna fight you guys at full strength. You don't even use that transformation, do you, Chayote?"

"Oh, well, whatever…" Chayote shrugged. "I just want to punish some demons."

"So then… I think we might need to draw lots, how many contestants will be taking part in the competition?" the announcer wondered while he scratched his head and turned to look at an entire bustling army of demons showing their fangs and swiping their knife-sized claws, making mean and scary faces.

"I do not care how many humans take part. Only the strongest demon generals of each tribe will take part in the competition. The weaklings are unfit to decide over the fate of our race. Is that okay with you, Garlick Jr.?" Shura turned to the floating shrimp who just shrugged.

"Fine. I only brought my minions with me anyway. I'd rather that the humans would also place some limitations on their competitors. It would be troublesome to slay every weakling that makes their way onto the stage…" Garlick Jr. sneered at the human competitors.

"What do you think, Piccolo?" Shura turned to his most powerful fighter. "Should we limit the number of humans to challenge us? There are eight of us total, four of Garlick Jr.'s crew, me, Mera and Gora and you."

"If we had eight contestants, it would be easier to draw lots. It makes for a fine number of contestants, in fact." The announcer pointed out before being instantly silenced by a growl of demons objecting to him talking over their overlord who asked Piccolo of his opinion. The poor man shriveled up in fear for his life though none of the demons as much as touched him, afraid that Shura would punish those that harmed the official ruling over his little tournament.

"Whatever. Come at us all at once, for all I care, it won't make a difference. It would be for the better if we killed everyone that tried to make trouble and object to our rule. Let it be known that those that want to challenge the Demon Realm must fight now or stay obedient forever." Piccolo Jr. stated with a cold expression at first but the more he gave the matter thought, the more emotional he became, finishing the statement with a tight fist raised by his face.

"That's just fine. I don't see any other fighters here but us that are willing to go at it. There are eight of us too, counting in Yajirobe." Goku pointed at the row of combatants alongside him.

"Ya fool! Don't go 'round countin' me in! I was just standin' around, scopin' the situation out, ya know!" Yajirobe, still in his ridiculous mask, shook his fist out while yelling at Goku from the other side of the demolished building. He had counted on Goku not noticing him, without a doubt, as he hid behind a wall of rubble but Goku had always had him counted into the fold.

"Very well then… Though there is still a minor issue, the building with the lots seems to be destroyed. How shall we determine the order of the fights?" the announcer scratched the back of his head, the stress of realizing he might mess up his one job made him pour with more sweat that he had to promptly wipe off his face again.

"Hmph… There is no need for lots. We shall determine this matter how demons always settle their differences – a survival tournament. A fighter with the most guts takes it onto the stage and then fights all of the challengers until they cannot fight anymore. The winning tribe is the one with the last combatant standing." Shura ruled.

"That's fine, let's do that." Chayote broke her stance and walked out of the line, taking the first step onto the fighting arena. "The more demons I get to beat on at once, the better."

"Wow… She… Really doesn't like demons, even more than it seems normal." Krillin whispered to Yamcha's right side.

"Maybe something happened out in space? Chayote got a decent bit stronger after returning from space so maybe she fought space demons at some point?" Yamcha shrugged, failing to provide the explanation that Krillin sought from him as someone who was Chayote's training companion for a long time.

"No." Tenshinhan shook his head. "She lost to Demon King Piccolo and that doesn't sit well with Chayote. Who would have thought that someone so fresh to martial arts would be so prideful in her status as a martial artist, although, my pride as a martial artist has also been shattered so I can only hope that Chayote will give us a chance to prove ourselves as well."

"You're heading out first?" Goku leaned back on his arms. "Come on, Chayote, don't be that way, let the others have some fun too…"

"Fun? Goku-sa, these demons are trying to take over the world, you know! You should take this more seriously. If they take over the world, we cannot celebrate our marriage with a feast and guests." Chi-Chi objected to Goku's laid back nature.

"I'd like to say that it's fine, let Chayote crush all the demons like she wants to but… This might be our very last chance to fight it out like this." Krillin spoke up. "I am sure that everyone would like to show off the fruits of their training and contribute to saving their world."

"I don't care 'bout that, go ahead and break a leg if ya want to. Just make sure to invite me to that celebration that chick spoke 'bout." Yajirobe waved his hand in dismissal.

"Yeah, just let Chayote murder them all!" Bulma shot her fist out into the sky.

"It might not be the best choice to have Chayote fight first." Muten Roshi objected, instantly receiving the attention of every human, Saiyan or demon alike. Despite the measly attempts of the army of demons around him to strike fear into the old man's heart, just a glimpse into the face of the old martial arts master made the demons crawl back and leave a circle of empty space at least a meter wide around the old man and his friends in the audience.

"But why? Isn't she one of the strongest fighters we have?" Oolong wondered.

"Yeah, if she defeats all the demons, nobody else needs to get endangered." Puar joined in.

"If these demons fight anything like Demon King Piccolo and his sons, they'll be tricky combatants with a respectable level of strength to boot. It would be wiser to reserve our most powerful fighters until Piccolo Jr.'s turn comes, to have them observe and learn the fighting styles of these demons. I implore you, Chayote, for the sake of the faith of this planet, please soothe your rage and silence your impatience just this once and let it simmer until it is needed." Muten Roshi pleaded with the Saiyan who just looked back at the old man with eyes brimming with rage as well as disbelief that she was being called back by a majority vote.

Since when did she listen to anything those weaklings had to say? She was a proud Saiyan warrior and those demons had done nothing but humiliate her and wash away her pride every step of the way. They have trampled over her sense of self and her strength, both inner and physical, testing and torturing her while mocking her every step of that gruesome peril. They made her feel useless again, for the first time since she made her way down to Earth, they made her question if she ever belonged anywhere at all and they made her feel weak and powerless, King Piccolo sealed her inside a damned rice cooker!

"Hurry up and send out somebody for me to thrash!" Chayote climbed all the way onto the stage and yelled out at the demons.

"Hey, Demon King Shura, can I fight now, can I!? All this talking makes me all drowsy and I wanna have a good smashing before I go to bed!" Gora turned to his master and asked for a turn on the tournament stage.

"Very well, go and have your fun but be careful. She is no mere human. They spoke about this woman as if she's the strongest fighter they have." Shura nodded, awarding his trusted mace with the honor of fighting for his Demon King first.

"Make her show as much of her true power and techniques before you lose, or else I'll kill you myself." Piccolo Jr. hissed out to the giant demon lumbering his way onto the arena. To one as large as Gora, stepping onto the ring was almost like taking a small step up the stairs two tiles wide.

"I'll make mincemeat outta you!" Gora pulled out an obsidian staff decorated with emerald ornaments, preparing to rush at Chayote. It didn't even feel like it mattered if he deserved what he would get in the end, someone of his power level should have sensed the tremendous difference in strength anyway.

"W-Wait! Weapons are not permitted in the tournament!" announcer objected but it was to no end. Gora charged at his opponent nevertheless, had it not been for the sudden peak of interest from Shura's side and the Demon King calling off his house-sized brute, Gora would have just run at Chayote and accepted the consequences.

"Wait, Gora, drop your weapons and fight with your hands!" Shura demanded.

"Hmm…" Garlick Jr. smirked. "May I suggest something? Demons tend to use weaponry in combat. My subordinates Nicky and Ginger both also use swords. It is a fundamental part of our fighting style so getting rid of them weakens us."

"Well, that's too bad, but weaponry is forbidden in the World Martial Arts Tournament. It is one of the oldest rules ever recorded. If you wish to fight under similar rules, you must disarm your fighters." The announcer got lost in his role as an official and spoke against a demon, had it not been for the fact that he argued with a demon that wasn't a part of Demon King Shura's crew, he might have gotten punished by a wilder soul amongst the midst of the demons in the audience.

"That is fine, though perhaps you would allow a slight modification of the battlefield, in that case, to even the odds?" Garlick Jr. wondered. "You see, in my experience, the hidden potential of us demons is truly drawn out while fighting underneath the abyss of the Dead Zone. Just a hint of the atmosphere of that vile place summons the worst in us."

"Well… I don't know, what would you say about this, contestant Chayote?" announcer turned to Chayote for her opinion.

"I don't care! Do whatever you will. Use whatever techniques you think will shield you from me. If they will make this weakling strong enough to last longer against me, that's even better, the more I get to kick him around the better!" Chayote yelled out, making a threatening gesture by raising her fist up in front of the announcer. At that moment he might have been more frightened by the Saiyan youth rather than her oversized demonic opponent.

"V-Very well, contestant Garlick Jr. please summon your Dead Zone in that case!" the announcer turned to Garlick Jr.

"Hey, Garlick Jr., you don't truly intend on opening the Dead Zone, do you? I won't allow you to swallow up my world like that! I won't rule over a crumbled bunch of space rocks." Shura objected.

"Oh, don't worry, I am fully aware of the destructive potential of that dimension. I will merely convert the energy of the portal to the Demon Realm into the atmosphere prime for the opening of the Dead Zone. The Dead Zone is the source for all my strength, I can mold and manipulate its energy freely, open and close it as I deem fit. Don't worry, I don't intend to be a Kami of a bunch of rocks sucked inside the Dead Zone either so a mere harmless fissure to the Dead Zone, without any of its more volatile tendencies, will be enough to multiply the power of all demons under its atmosphere tenfold." Garlick Jr. smirked.

"Tenfold!? That is so powerful it feels dirty." Demon King Shura admitted.

"Dirty? Hardly, it is a matter of our demonic physiology. Don't you wish to prove that us demons are more fitted to rule over the world than humans, incapable of drawing out such power? That is just the way our superior bodies are put together…" Garlick Jr. shrugged as if it was just a harmless change of scenery.

"You, vampire-shrimp! Hurry up and power this useless trash up!" Chayote's yelling broke Garlick Jr's concentration, forcing the leader of Garlick Jr.'s tribe of demons to sigh and raise his hands over his head.

"Very well, if you are in such a hurry to die, human. Prepare to gaze into the Dead Zone and feel its noxious fumes, its crushing pressure, and malevolent atmosphere empower your murderer and bring out his worst features. Don't ask me to undo it for you will be begging mercy from a demon and all you will achieve from such a fruitless venture is embarrass yourself!" Garlick Jr. chuckled as malicious, mahogany-colored aura defined his overflowing aura, leaking out in the shape of outreaching tendrils that appeared to rise up like smoke into the sky and turn the doom and gloom that had been encompassing the Earth for months now into a layer of clouds matching the color of Garlick's aura.

The rift to the Demon Realm, black with an oddly lucent outline began morphing, pulsing with a carmine glow but, as a powerful pull began gathering the debris scattered around the tournament grounds and sucking them up into the heavens that possessed an open rift straight to hell, that same pull died out and let the powerless Earthlings that couldn't keep themselves from ascending and becoming food to the Dead Zone fall right back down when the wound bleeding the Dead Zone atmosphere closed up into a shape of a fractured fissure instead of a gaping hole.

Bolts of black lightning conjured up by Garlick Jr.'s evil Ki appeared to stitch the bleeding out Dead Zone up and limit its destructive tendencies to suck up everything in its path to the minimum. The poor souls that had been forced upward by the pull did not have enough time to ascend high enough to where they would have been killed by the fall for they grasped onto anything underneath their reach to stay grounded for as long as possible.

All that Chayote could look at and think about was the growing size and drastically skyrocketing power level of her opponent. Gora's eyes had whited out, his muscles swelled to where they ripped out of his already far too tight attire while most veins present in his body formed a grotesque and unnatural, net-like formation and Gora's demonic yell of the physical strain and a sadistic enjoyment of the massive increase in power turned to a more low-pitched and infernal tone. It was as if something more primal, more dastardly spoke from deep down in Gora's chest.

While her opponent was a far more frightening adversary in his current state, his power surpassing his previous strength tenfold, just as Garlick Jr. promised, all that this transformation had achieved was made this brute a more attractive enemy for Chayote to destroy and unleash her vengeful rage on.


	91. Annual Battle Power Special No 1

**REBIRTH SAGA:**

Frieza 1st Form: 530 000

Zarbon: 23 400

Pee from Human Resources: 1630

Saiyan No. 1: 2100

Saiyan No. 2: 2100

Saiyan No. 3: 1200

Saiyan No. 4: 2000

Instructor Yuca: 2080

Chayote: 630

Saibaman _(grown on Planet Vegeta soil)_: 812

Kibito: 5 700 000 000

Whis _(Heavily Suppressed)_: 4 180 813 511 102 120 600

Great King Enma: 2200

Kami: 220

Mr. Popo: 420

Chayote _(Rebirth Sickness)_: 210 _(a combination of Chayote both feeling parched after being dead for quite a while as well as a long fall from the Kami Tower, natural adjustment to being alive again and having to regain the sense in her muscles caused a massive yet temporary decrease in Battle Power)_

Boar Thug No. 1: 6

Boar Thug No. 2: 5

Boar Thug No. 3: 6

Boar Thug No 4: 4 _(drank some bad milk in the morning and was, therefore, suffering from indigestion at the time)_

Huge Dino: 53

Triceratops: 38

Upa: 2

Bora: 86

Gorgonzola: 17

Taopaipai: 129

Korin: 190

Chayote_ (after Korin Tower)_: 645

Red Ribbon Army Saga:

Red Ribbon Army soldiers: 6 _(8 while inside a fighter jet) (2 when thrown out the fighter jet and plummeting to their doom)_

Captain Yellow: 17

General Copper: 8

Metallitron Corps: 150 each

Colonel Violet: 16 _(with a full arsenal, 6 when fighting hand-to-hand, 4 when encumbered by loot she's stolen)_

Staff Officer Black: 26

Commander Red: 4 _(9 when using his revolver)_

Red Ribbon Battle Jacket: 82

**21ST WORLD MARTIAL ARTS TOURNAMENT SAGA:**

Chayote: 774

Launch _(Blue-Haired)_: 4

Jackie Chun: 90

Bulma: 4

Oolong: 3

Puar: 3

Launch _(Blond)_: 12

Qualifier's Participant No. 1: 16

Qualifier's No. 2: 6

Qualifier's Participant No. 3: 15

King Chappa: 88

Krillin: 63 _(usually much lower at this time due to nerves)_

Nam: 69

Bacterian: 8 _(his stench actually drops everyone else's Battle Power as determined by a complex math equation that takes into consideration a fighter's distance, their sensitivity to extreme sensory assault multiplied by a constant determined if the fighter has eaten recently and must now hurl or not)_

Yamcha: 38 _(1 when in proximity to a girl that's not Bulma, 2 when in proximity to Bulma)_

Ranfan: 25 _(is capable of reducing the Battle Powers of opposing males or homosexual or bisexual females, based on a complicated math equation that takes into consideration a fighter's distance, their ability to witness her shenanigans and the percentage of said shenanigans being absorbed by their sensory input, their sensitivity to lewdness multiplied by the age of the combatant)_

Son Goku: 88

Kaiju Giran: 82

Son Goku _(Great Ape Form)_: 880

Jackie Chun _(Power MAX)_: 1000

_***Note: Whenever a character uses a Kamehameha, their Battle Power is boosted by a multiplier of 20% to 40%, depending on how much power they put into the attack. After the attack, their Battle Powers drop by 10% to 20% due to the strain that the technique puts on their body until they rest. You can assume other Ki techniques have similar effects on Battle Power albeit with different multipliers.**_

**RAINBOW RIBBON BRIGADE SAGA:**

Krillin: 72

Yamcha: 62

Muten Roshi: 91

Bulma: 5

Launch _(Blue-Hair)_: 4

Launch _(Blond)_: 12

Chayote: 928 _(undergone multiple minor boosts during the World Martial Arts Tournament in addition to a minor boost in how well she's able to control her Ki and gaining some more knowledge in martial arts by observing Yamcha and Krillin trying to hit her)_.

_***Note: A character's boost received from training has a lot to do with the method of the training itself, character's race, personality traits but also their present Battle Power. If one-hundred push-ups boosted one's Battle Power by 0,1%, a character with a Battle Power of 1000 would see a much greater benefit from training than someone with a Battle Power of 2, if they could even perform said push-ups at all.**_

West City Policeman: 6

Bruce Lee Impersonator: 9 _(was being cuffed and taken away for impersonating Bruce Lee, because of this reason Chayote failed to run into him during her trip to West City)_

Dr. Brief: 4

Panchy: 4

Capsule Corps Receptionist Lady: 4

"Commander" Silver _(injured)_: 2 _(8 when firing a rocket launcher)_

White Ribbon Army Soldier No. 1: 6

White Ribbon Army Soldier No. 2: 6

Son Goku: 168

Major Metallitron: 150

Ninja Murasaki: 26

Kon Murasaki: 24

Cha Murasaki: 23

Aka Murasaki: 25

Nao Murasaki: 22

Artificial Human No. 8: 3 _(due to hatred of violence, full potential reaches ~190)_

General White: 9

Monster Buyon: 56 _(more dangerous due to immunity to physical damage)_

Artificial Human No. 5: 165 _(the exceptional power output was achieved through redirection of power from visual receptors to the central power core, making the Artificial Human too near-sighted for optimal application of its great Battle Power)_

Artificial Human No. 6: 180 _(the Artificial Human's joints are too faulty to handle its own power, making it wear out and crumble before even testing phases could be complete, albeit quite strong despite faulty construction)_

Artificial Human No. 7: 190 _(While the potential power output is impressive, the built up energy requires to be spent in order so that Artificial Human No. 6's joint problems did not manifest and damage the titanium frame. Prone to being violent toward the first thing in sight because of that. A major construction issue is the double-layered visual receptor that was meant to eliminate No. 5's vision issues – causes the Artificial Human to see its own reflection and try to destroy itself almost every time)_

Artificial Human No. 9: 140 _(Attempts were made to tone down the power output and stabilize the build. Superior use for reserve power attributed to the memory core. Unexpected consequence – Artificial Human is prone to sharing its experiences and stories ranging from its own manual chapters to military history of the Red Ribbon Army instead of combat)_

Artificial Human No. 10: 190 _(First model that managed to stabilize the optimal power output whilst removing all of the flaws of its predecessors. Runs out of power soon, requires hourly intake of pudding to stay operational. A major flaw of pudding-to-fuel conversion battery is that it does not accept any other source of energy except pudding, not even fuel)_

Artificial Human No. 11: 180 _(Some flawed lines of code in its programming made it distrustful of direct commands by its superiors, suspecting that a nefarious shapeshifter has replaced its superior and is trying to plot against the Red Ribbon Army from within. After realizing it might lead to rebellion in the future, Dr. Gero suspended and kept the model turned off until he could realize the flawed line and patch it out in the future__)_

Dr. Gero: 5

Micro-Roshi: 9

Colonel Silver: 38

"Commander" Blue: 79 _(Psychic powers give him the ability to nullify most of the Battle Power of other people)_

Giant Octopus: 79

**FORTUNETELLER BABA SAGA:**

Pilaf: 2

Mai: 6

Shu: 6

Son Goku_ (Post Korin)_: 302

Pilaf Giant Combot: 46

Fighter in the Line No. 1: 6

Fighter in the Line No. 2: 13

Fighter in the Line No. 3: 19

Fighter in the Line No. 4: 11

Fighter being taken out of the arena: 1

Fortuneteller Baba: 3

Dracula Man: 68

Dracula Man _(Empowered by Chayote's blood)_: 363

Chayote _(drained of blood)_: 488

Suke-san: 22

Mummy Man: 88

Devil Man: 96

Teen Raditz: 960

Teen Raditz _(Battle Worn)_: 864

Goku _(Power Restored)_: 1186

Tenshinhan: 145

Chiaotzu: 79 _(can reduce opponent's Battle Power via Psychokinesis)_

**22nd WORLD MARTIAL ARTS TOURNAMENT SAGA:**

Muten Roshi: 135

Launch _(Blue-Haired)_: 5

Bulma: 5

Puar: 3 _(can go up to 30, depending on the shape he takes)_

Oolong: 3 _(can go up to 30, depending on the shape he takes)_

Krillin: 189

Yamcha: 164

Tenshinhan: 435

Chiaotzu: 350 _(can manipulate other people's Battle Power via Psychokinesis)_

Man-Wolf: 50

Man-Man: 5

Goku: 1897

Tenshinhan _(Post-Meditation)_: 970

Chayote: 1392 _(actual combat efficiency is higher due to supernatural perception abilities that due to their magical nature do not translate into Battle Power)_

Chayote _(post-match with Goku)_: 1809

**KING PICCOLO SAGA:**

Tambourine: 134

Goku _(battle-worn)_: 928

Demon King Piccolo _(old)_: 200

Tenshinhan _(battle-worn)_: 340

Yamcha: 168

Yajirobe: 140

Bacterian: 22

Vodka: 4

Pumput: 28

Ranfan: 26

Hen: 69

Bearzoo: 16

Bearzoo Pirates: 5 to 9

Demon King Piccolo _(Old / Fused)_: 3628

Parbo: 6

King Castle Security: 6 to 8

Chayote: 1392

Great Ape Chayote: 13920

Drum _(Empowered)_: 1300

Krillin _(ROSAT)_: 1814

Goku _(ROSAT)_: 2466

Demon King Piccolo _(Old / Fused / Battle Worn)_: 3200

Goku _(Hot-Red)_: 3205

Chayote _(Zenkai)_: 6600

Goku _(Zenkai)_: 6800

**GRAND TOUR ARC:**

Chayote: 6600

Chayote _(in Beiko)_: 1320

Slug's Giant Robot: 1850

Shunabehan: 1350

Shunabehan _(Hot-Red)_: 5400

Mangochakuhan: 1699

Mangochakuhan_ (Hot-Red)_: 5097

Beiko Colossal Sky-Manta: 3000

Giant Bee: 67

Giant Space Beetle: 128

Giant Croc: 1290

Giant Hawk: 1400

Massive Spider: 280 _(weakens prey's Battle Power with web and venomous bites)_

Fishy Frieza Soldier: 2350

Devil-like Frieza Soldier: 2500

Giant Goat: 2600

Giant Giants: 4600 – 8000

Warriors of Planet Sando: 1350 – 2450

Deep One of Planet Sando: 29 000

Flat-Faced Alien Engineers: 420

Tights: 4

Jaco: 1260

Frieza Army Space Station Grunts: 1200 – 1500

Slug Army Soldiers: 800 – 900

Medamatcha: 18 300

Meda: 4575

Chayote _(Zenkai)_: 10 320

Raiti: 500

Zacro: 700

Commander Zeeun: 14 500

Angila: 23 700

Wings: 22 600

Lord Slug _(Old)_: 39 360

Slug's Priestesses: 720

Chayote _(Zenkai)_: 12 600

Chi-Chi: 120

Ox-King: 90

Upa _(Kami-Training)_: 230

Goku: 8840

Tenshinhan: 5820

Yamcha: 3264

Chiaotzu: 2600 _(Can manipulate other Battle Powers via Psychokinesis)_

Krillin: 3628

Chayote _(ROSAT)_: 13 260

Upa _(ROSAT)_: 700

Spirits of Kami Past: 500 - 1200

* * *

_**Author's Note: One year ago I posted the first chapter of DB: Paradise Lost. Seems crazy! Not only the fact that I've been working on the story which I kind of just wanted to touch and get done with, just engaging some creative juices and seeing what they could cook up, but also the fact how little I've managed to progress in the story and how deep I went into every tiny aspect of the universe. Dragon Ball portion is just now wrapping up. Z is just now visible on the horizon... Here's to another year of Paradise Lost, hoping that maybe this time I manage to wrap the story up and the next Special can cover the rest of the story, not just one or two Sagas of Z :D**_


	92. A Deceitful Upset

Gora didn't look like he was in a talkative mood at all after his transformation. Having buffed up considerably the giant just took off in a mindless dash toward Chayote. At least he retained enough brainpower to have dropped his weaponry, charging at his opponent with bare hands. Despite yelling loud from the bottom of his chest, Gora didn't run out of breath before he reached a dangerous distance from Chayote.

His muscles churned with tension as his arms wrapped around her in a bearhug. He tilted the Saiyan off the ground and continued to roar in an attempt to intimidate her as he locked his arms behind the Saiyan with great ease and squeezed, employing all the strength he could muster.

"Is that all you've got?" Chayote looked the crazed demon in the eye while still in his grasp. "Aren't you supposed to be the powerhouse of your breed?"

"Crush you!" Gora bellowed as if his own madness and overflowing power pained him. He took off the ground and directed his opponent downward. A few worried gasps came from the human side of the ring but Chayote couldn't identify Goku's alongside them. She wished that she took him for a Saiyan ruthless enough to not care about her well-being or to feel jealous of battle damage she was about to sustain, aiding her evolution as a warrior.

With a thunderous smash, Gora planted with a slam of his belly aimed down and Chayote still clutched in his grasp.

It would have been vain of Chayote to say that she didn't feel that. More importantly, it would have been a lie. Her head smashed against the tiles that cracked and ground to dust instantly, dirt disappeared underneath her and her demonic opponent as if it was soufflé suffering a sizable bite by someone with quite the sweet tooth.

Air rushed into Chayote's nose when Gora stood up, there was none of his demonic mass pressing against her. A rough lock against her heels suggested that the demon was not yet done with her, Gora roared out as he pulled Chayote by her ankles and swung her about, slamming her against the arena floor multiple more times.

"F-Fight back!" Krillin's voice reached Chayote. "Why isn't she fighting back?" he turned to Goku. "Is the enemy that powerful!?"

"Calm down, Krillin." Tenshinhan cut his friend's panic attack short. "Don't see this battle with your eyes, feel it by following the Ki of the combatants."

"Chayote is bleeding hers… If she doesn't take this fight more seriously, she'll waste the advantage in power she has by losing too much Ki." Chi-Chi noted.

"No. It's just like Chayote to get pummeled on purpose. That's what's so annoying about her. Apparently, us Saiyans get stronger after tough battles so Chayote just lets easy battles turn tough for her. And here we are breaking our backs training…" Goku snickered as if his friend wasn't being manhandled on the stage.

"Tough talk from a pile of trash…" Gora declared with an augmented voice. "Get outta my sight!" he grunted out while tossing Chayote aside. It was only then that Chayote finally flexed her muscles and stopped herself in mid-air. She did so only to be greeted by a bright ray of light as Gora's mouth-blast caught her by surprise, enveloping her in its gleam and world-ending might.

"Well… At least that power-up you've received helped make your hits useful. Make no mistake though, demon, this here isn't a fight, it's your punishment." Chayote's voice froze Gora in his tracks as he had intended his mouth blast to have utterly eliminated her, whereas the more the smoke had cleared, the more evident it became that he failed to even dirty up her clothes.

A crack seemed to split everyone's heads into two by the violent challenge to the integrity of one's auditory perception. A loathsome sensation of hatred towards the obnoxious noise that made one feel uneasy from the very bottom of one's gut took hold of the stage as Chayote's boot ended up imbedded into Gora's face. The poor brute just twitched his arms while they reached to each of his sides, his face caved in by the boot meeting his infernal grimace.

It took a while for the aftermath of Chayote's hit to register with the earthly laws of physics and send Gora rolling back like a ragdoll. Before her dazed opponent could fly off the stage, Chayote dashed in behind him and threw a rear horse kick that connected straight to Gora's spine, sending him off into the atmosphere. Chayote raised up her hand and grabbed her wrist with the other one, aiming with the tips of her fingers while minute Ki blasts gleamed just an inch past the ends of her fingernails.

One of the Ki blasts lit ablaze, another one became pale with a shine of blue, yet another one shined with an emerald glow while one remained in its unchanged golden state but began shimmering with a spiky aura at its edges and the last one became transparent but emitted an intense hum while it stood around waiting to be used.

"Jelly-Beam!" Chayote chanted out when the Ki blasts homed in on her plummeting deadweight of an opponent. Upon detonation, the blue and pail beam left a layer of ice covering more than half of Gora's body, the sparky, golden beam cracked against his gut and made the airborne demonic titan twitch as if he was being shocked, the burning one transferred all of its heat upon the enemy setting him ablaze while the last one detonated the whole bunch together in a crowning explosion.

"I guess Chayote managed to master transforming her Ki into various elements too. I see, if she can go Hot-Red like the rest of us, it's no wonder she's been slacking off so far!" Krillin laughed out filled to the brink with overconfidence that he will not even need to see the arena at this pace.

"So that's why she asked me to teach her the Dodonpa, she adapted the basic principles on one of her Jelly-Beams…" Tenshinhan muttered, reaching for his chin with his hand as he pondered the technique he had just witnessed. A genius of martial arts such as him with the supernatural ability to understand, copy and master techniques he saw only once without a doubt saw value in witnessing new and exciting techniques his peers have come up with during their training.

Chayote's eyes remained laser-focused on her plummeting opponent, covered with patches of burns, his clothes singed off and nothing but airborne strands existing of his Viking hat. Some of the demon's flesh got peeled off when it was frozen and the violent force of the blast ripped it off of him in that state. Gora's frame took off a neat half a meter after hitting the arena from up there and turned over on his side.

"Don't you play possum, or else I'll kill you right now." Chayote growled at the demon, fully aware of the supernatural toughness of such a being, one that would have blown even the toughest humans out of the water. A human might not have survived Gora's wounds but the demon still had a bit less than half of his Ki simmering inside of him.

"You're… Strong…" Gora barely managed to muster it out while standing up. He failed to stand twice before succeeding as well. Once his arm that he used to push his body off the ground gave in, next he just face-planted the moment he got back up. The third time was the charm.

"Is that all the ingenious input you have to share?" Chayote bent her head to the side. "A useless creature with half a wit, defined by its strength and found lacking in its most proud quality as well. Even as demon filth, you disgust me."

"Sheesh, Chayote's really being mean to that demon-guy, how did you survive training with her?" Krillin turned to Yamcha.

"This is the first time I'm seeing her like this," Yamcha admitted. "She must just really hate demons…"

"If I can… Hit you just one more time, reduce your strength just one more bit for Demon King Shura, that is fine. I am content serving… That much use to my Demon King." Gora pounded on his own chest with the upper side of his fist.

"Gora…" Shura muttered from the sidelines.

"For Demon King Shura! The one true Demon King!" Gora exclaimed while charging at Chayote, he only found her foot nearly snapping his head back as it connected to his jaw, stunning the demon in place as his body raced to regain consciousness after temporarily blacking out from the might of his opponent that would have made even greater demons than him tremble.

A flurry of basketball-sized craters littered Gora's body as Chayote didn't hold any of her rage back and just let her opponent have it. Gora stumbled back and stuffed his thumb into his mouth, blowing on it hard enough to make the blood leaking from his cracked forehead squirt for a second. The blow was sufficient to fix the indentures to his chest cavity and gut that Chayote had left.

"Shura…" Gora mumbled, his consciousness floating somewhere in between being alive and dead. "Demon King Shura is the strongest… I will not let mere humans gain an advantage on the demons under King Shura's rule!"

The lumbering giant threw his arms up, expelling a supermassive quantity of his Ki outward in an awesome display of perseverance and might as he had created an explosive wave to swallow up the entire fighting stage. The human spectators found themselves unwillingly crouching behind the demon folk on the sidelines while even the martial artists of the Dragon Team clutched themselves and hunkered down to the best of their abilities to withstand the tremendous pressure of Gora's erupting Ki.

"Dammit…" Krillin's voice shook. "This Ki is crazy… He still had this much power while lingering on unconsciousness."

"Just a mere grunt is giving Chayote this much of a fight, huh?" Yamcha grit his teeth as sweat began making itself apparent on the martial artist's forehead. "I guess we're going to be in for our lives against even the mere henchmen of the Demon King…"

"If Demon King Piccolo had the Dead Zone working to amp him up, he'd have taken Earth in a blink of an eye…" Tenshinhan grit his teeth.

"Piccolo?" Garlick Jr. threw a mean smile in the way of the three-eyed warrior. "That shitstain is nothing but a fart of a usurper of my father's rightful throne as Kami! Even if the Demon Race lingered on extinction, I wouldn't blink once if it meant helping him and would much rather see us go extinct than aid that… Thing!"

A spiteful stare launched bloodstained arrows at the direction of Garlick Jr. from Piccolo Jr.'s side. For a moment there it seemed as if Piccolo Jr's beady irises had turned red, then went blanker in blind fury until they became pink and then faded out entirely. It was safe to assume that while Demon King Shura aligned the various demon tribes underneath his name, they were still lightyears from getting along.

"His reincarnation is our best hope at winning this tournament, Garlick Jr." Demon King Shura warned his fellow commander of demonic henchmen.

"Hmph… What's a reincarnation of the evil essence of a filthy cheater worth? I'd rather lose than let the legacy of the demon race be stained with the history of such a vile thing being the reason we won." Garlick Jr. showed that there was no love being lost between him and Piccolo's spawn either.

"That wasn't a bad attack." Chayote dragged her knuckle across her face, her eyes gleamed with ecstasy when she saw a slight glint of red soaking her sleeve. If this grunt managed to wound her, that meant that she'd grow even stronger after murdering him and plowing through the rest. They were worthy opponents to destroy if she was to grow even stronger and start picking off Lord Slug's crew eventually.

"She's barely harmed at all!" Chiaotzu yelled out, pointing both of his index fingers at the female Saiyan.

"I guess the enemy had lost too much Ki in the previous beatdown to make a significant impact…" Tenshinhan wiped the sweat off his own face with his wristband.

Gola panted, his entire upper body appeared to be dragging the big guy down for a nap. While his red eyes appeared still fixed on his hated enemy, even his eyelids began squinting downward, enacting their mighty weight as if attempting to put this beast of rage and unrelenting force down for a slumber since he put out far more power than he should have been capable of naturally.

With an incomprehensible yell, Chayote dashed off at Gora. Her eyes just as blinded with fury and seeing just as much red as her roided out demonic opponent. Arms stretched behind her back and looking to tear the demonic brute up limb from limb. Lightning ran down Gora's body while two scimitars manifested in both of his hands once the lightning cleared out. A form of demonic materialization.

"Demonic Slicer!" Gora roared out, throwing his swords around as if he was looking to fillet the Saiyan lunging at him.

Streaks of red opened up around Chayote's wrists and her sleeves tore off, sliced up into ribbons while blood streaked from the numerous shallow cuts opened on her body from Gora's surprise attack. Goku grunted in shock, Tenshinhan and Krillin placed one foot on the edge of the ring while the announcer ran up to the demolished patch of dirt that the fighting ring was at that moment waving his arms around.

"Contestant Gora is eliminated! Weapons are forbidden in the Tournament of Doom, just like they are in the World Martial Arts Tournament!" the announcer yelled out into his microphone while demonlings began raising a ruckus and threatening to tear the poor man apart and share him for a brief brunch alongside one another.

"Gora… Why?" King Shura looked at his beaten and broken subject with pity. "Why would you bring me shame this way?"

"Forgive me, my Demon King. It isn't you... I wanted to bring dishonor to... I did so b-because… If I can spill just one drop of blood… From this human… If I can weaken her up just… Just a little bit… Then I have served my use to you… Strength in the Demon Realm is everything… I… Here… Now… I am weak…" tears began running down the cheeks of the lumbering titan, "But if I can serve some use… Dishonoring myself is fine. I don't… Dishonor you… Demon King Shura. I choose dishonor over… Being of no use."

"You shit-drip! You think you'll escape me by just getting yourself disqualified?" Chayote growled, having regained her senses after letting her rage blind her for a moment and receiving grates of blood-red as a punishment for that lapse in judgment. "Screw this tournament and the rules, you're not getting away this easy!"

Chayote threw her hand back and leaned in for a charge. The Dragon Team had seen Lima Spear enough times to realize when it was coming and none of them doubted for a second that Gora would have been reduced to ash if he took it at his current state.

"Contestant Chayote, you'll be disqualified if you kill contestant Gora, even if he has lost the match!" the announcer warned but Chayote wasn't hearing him anymore, all she was seeing was dreams of Gora's remains showering her and the warmth of it, even if it wasn't real, made her wish it was real.

"Dead Zone!" Garlick Jr. thrust his hands out, the rift above his head opened like the jaws of heavens themselves though the place that waited behind the nightmarish gate was less than heavenly and gracious. A stream of pressurized air hit Chayote and pressed her to the ground like a force of gravity intensified hundredfold and focused on a singular location, localized just around her.

The jaws of the Dead Zone looked hungry as they howled and emanated wine-red from beyond the point of no return right past its entryway and right now only one enraged Saiyan was the target that could have nourished the Zone's hunger. Like a scoop of noodle, the stream of air with Chayote alongside it swooped up and through the Dead Zone with the rift narrowing back to its earlier, cracked state.

"What did you do!?" Goku yelled out, pointing a finger at Garlick Jr.

"She was about to kill Gora, wasn't she? That's against the rules, as fair announcer-man has so not-too-eloquently stated. I was just acting in defense of my kind, protecting a trusted guard of the Demon King who has chosen to submit the match by getting himself disqualified." Garlick Jr. chuckled into his palm.

"You… You planned this all along, didn't you?" Tenshinhan accused the turquoise dwarf.

"I don't know what you're talking about here. I didn't use the Dead Zone during the match, did I? That's because the match was going along nicely, all by the rules. I only responded with an unlawful act as an answer to an attempt to kill my powerless demonic compatriot." Garlick Jr. shrugged, playing it off as indifference. "Don't worry, the Dead Zone isn't quite as deadly as its name suggests. Your friend will just float through pitch darkness inside a limitless, black void forever. Or until I deem it right to release her, as I've said, the Dead Zone is my father's creation and therefore under my complete control."

"So your old man made a black void to trap people in as his project to become Kami? No wonder why Kami was chosen for the position instead of him…" Krillin shook his fist at the despicable dwarf.

"I don't think I will bother sending you to the Dead Zone, shrimp, I'll just pop you like the annoying pimple that you are!" Garlick Jr. hissed at the grievous insult of his father's legacy.

"Well… I suppose that what contestant Garlic Jr. says makes some sense. Clearly, both contestants have broken the rules and are therefore eliminated. As long as contestant Garlic Jr. promises to release contestant Chayote after the tournament, once her behavior is no longer a threat to the tournament, I'll allow the Tournament of Doom to continue." The announcer raised his arm.

"Just whose side is this guy on?" Yamcha grit his teeth while clenching his fist in irritation.

"Nobody's, I believe that's the point." Tenshinhan sighed.

"If only Chayote listened to us… Now our strongest fighter is out and she's only eliminated one of the enemies." Chiaotzu whimpered floating beside Tenshinhan.

"Those conniving demons! I wanna teach them a lesson!" Krillin stretched out and spun his arm around the joint by its shoulder. "Let me at 'em!"

"That's the spirit!" Goku nodded. "Just don't let your anger get the better of you as Chayote did."

"My Demon King, let me defend your honor in the Tournament of Doom now." Mera turned to King Shura.

"I'd rather keep my trusty guards by my side…" Demon King Shura declined that offer.

"What's wrong with you? You're the King of all Demons!" Piccolo Jr. scolded Shura. "Every pathetic weakling around us is your guard. We've little to no use for weaklings like Mera so let her thin the heard of those rabbit-turds the humans are throwing at us."

"That's right, I suppose I do still have you, don't I?" Shura nodded in agreement before nodding at Mera as well. "Very well, defend the honor of your Demon King then and win the Demon Race dominion over this world then!"

Mera pressed her left hand over her right breast and bowed her upper body, the sword by her side discharged into a jolt of lightning as the demonic beauty took the stage to carve the legacy of her race into the fabric of history with her own two hands.


	93. Flash And Substance

"Umm… King Shura-san…" the announcer turned to the Demon King while Mera slowly walked her way onto the tournament arena, swallowing up her opponent whole with her eyes and imagining all the possible punishment she could have inflicted on this human while Krillin engaged in stretching exercises.

"Yes, human." Shura turned back at the announcer. "Have my demons broken any other rules of your tournament?"

"Well, no… But contestant Chayote has not exactly lost the match. If she found a way to return from… Wherever your subject sent her… She would still be able to compete. Do you agree with my assessment?" the announcer scratched the back of his head.

"Hmm… She is your strongest combatant, it seems, it makes sense you cling to that hope so much. It is regrettable that we weren't able to defeat her and prove to you how fruitless your hopes were but… Perhaps, if she does come back, in some way, yes, we will allow her to compete once more." Demon King Shura nodded.

"Subject?" Garlick Jr. turned to Shura, grinding his teeth. "I am Garlick Jr., my father was a rival of Demon King Piccolo himself. I do not reside in the Demon Realm, I am no mere subject of Demon King Shura."

"You will be, once the Demon King takes over the Earth." Piccolo Jr. observed. "If you wish to rule over your pile of rocks and bunch of humans as Kami, you will bend to King Shura's will."

Garlick Jr. threw his fist out, shaking it in front of his face as if preparing to attack his own folk, enraged enough to send crackles of red lightning across his body and send overwhelming blasts of his aura across from his body to the point where his power became visible even to a mere human such as the tournament announcer who took a few steps back. Despite all of his outrage and offense that he felt from Piccolo Jr.'s remark, Garlick Jr. stood down instead of foolishly challenging Piccolo Jr., the trump card of his own race.

"You, human, you look meek. Are you sure you wish to compete?" Mera pointed her finger at Krillin who had finally finished his stretches and took a fighting pose.

"You're the one who should power-up." Krillin cut right back at her, his face looked serious enough to portray just how much not up for fooling around the baldy was.

"Fine, it's your funeral…" Mera extended her arms to the sides and let inside all of the seeping Evil Ki from the fissure in the Dead Zone. Wine-colored Ki burst forth out of her body in the shape of a violet, burning aura while violet lightning bolts crackled around her, forcing the ground beneath the two to shake.

"She powered up…" Yamcha stated the obvious. "Before that, Krillin was leagues ahead of her but what about now?"

"Their Ki are too close to tell. It will not be the difference in power that will decide the victor but in how each fighter uses their strength." Tenshinhan said. "The favorite to win will become clear after the first exchange of fists."

The announcer rushed up to the stage and leaned in to declare the beginning of the second match. Before he could, however, Demon King Shura raised his arm and let out a staunch yell from his chest. A pulse of lightning enveloped the arena, reducing it to utter ashes before materializing a new fighting stage in its place with both of the fighters still on it.

"This ring appears to be important to the tournament, yes? I repaired it for you." King Shura looked to the announcer who just nodded in acknowledgment and declared the beginning of the second match by yelling it out into his microphone.

Mera took off first, the very fraction of a second that the announcer's voice soothed from the strain of declaring the beginning of the second match, she was off and charging at Krillin. With a back-handed smack, she sent Krillin flying toward the wall with the demonic visage carved into the stone while rushing after her airborne opponent in pursuit. The demoness struck with a lion's paw, rampaging all over Krillin's body, displaying long and quick reach with her strikes.

Mighty enough to send shockwaves resonating through the stage with each strike and yet controlled enough with her fury to not devastate the wall behind Krillin and keep him trapped in a corner. It was only when Mera concluded her demonic pursuit with a jumping knee strike that the wall collapsed with Krillin underneath the rubble. Having just pummeled her opponent, the demoness returned to the center of the stage and turned to the announcer.

"So, have I won?" she wondered.

"Well… Normally I must count to ten, then, if the enemy is still down, you will be declared the victor, yes…" the announcer nodded.

"Don't be foolish, Mera!" Garlick Jr. hissed. "Murder that pathetic human right now, do not allow mere rules restrain you! You're embarrassing the entire Demon Race!"

"That would be a cause for disqualification!" the announcer declared.

"To hell with that!" Garlick Jr. floated up above the cowering man and pointed his finger at him, letting a red flicker of light threaten the announcer's life for at any time it might have erupted in a beam that would have left a hole in the announcer's chest cavity.

"What do you mean, to hell with that?" Piccolo Jr. cheeked the floating, blue shrimp. "Didn't you send that hysterical woman to the Dead Zone because you were abiding the rules?"

"Oh… Well…" Garlick Jr. rubbed the back of his head, wondering how best to squirm out of the current situation.

"Don't let that snake throw you off, Mera, if you get disqualified – we'll lose another fighter. You have a chance to weaken multiple humans now. Win by the rules!" Demon King Shura decreed.

"Yes, Great Demon King!" Mera bowed, her hair flowed behind her like mad tendrils of blood-red, aura of wine surrounding her in an outline that carved into one's eyes when attempting to examine the demoness closer. "Begin the count, human!"

"Ouch!" Krillin grunted while rising from the rubble. "Jeez, this lady hits hard!" he mumbled to himself.

"H-He survived!?" Demon King Shura's eyes widened. "Mera is just as powerful as Gora, Gora managed to land hits on their mightiest fighter! What is the meaning of this!?"

"Alright, I guess this makes it my turn now, huh?" Krillin took a fighting pose and prepared to rush at Mera, the demoness cowered at first, thrown back by the sudden and unexpected recovery of her opponent who, while carrying marks of bruising where her nails managed to carve into his scalp and tear his jacket, also having lost his black cap, did not look anywhere close to dying just yet.

Krillin darted at Mera with a flying kick but he could only hit thin air – the demoness had moved out of the way in a feat of instantaneous movement. Having vanished in a snap and left only her afterimage after her to throw Krillin off-guard. The bald martial artist threw his arms up and blocked Mera's double ax handle slam from behind and over his head before jumping up and back over himself, Mera blocked Krillin's overhead kick and the two exchanged blows in a flurry of series of strikes and blocks before a clash with their knees sent the two to the opposite sides of the ring panting.

"I can't believe it… A mere human is equal to Mera in strength, not just Mera's natural power but the very depth of her demonic potential!" Demon King Shura appeared shaken by Krillin's display of strength. He had hoped the shrimpy human to be completely outmatched by one of his two finest demons, especially when empowered tenfold by Garlick Jr's Dead Zone atmosphere leaking onto Earth further.

"No. Mera has a slight edge. Unless her sudden and vast power-up has some sort of a drawback or Krillin figures out some strategy to win this, she will come out on top." Tenshinhan grumbled.

"Yeah, he won't make it easy though. Anyone of us should be able to finish the match from that point on." Yamcha nodded.

"Are you sure, Yamcha?" Chiaotzu turned to his ally, "I seem to recall you having a problem with fighting women. Like that one time training in the Time Chamber…"

"That's why I had to train with Chayote, to learn to get over that, don't worry, I will more than pull my own weight!" Yamcha declared boldly pointing at himself with his thumb and smiling with enough confidence in his abilities to calm even the most distrustful in his skills around him.

"I can fight that demon lady…" Yajirobe butt his large head out of nowhere. "I trained to fight demons too, you know..."

"Of course he's willing to jump in and fight when he has to fight a tired woman-demon…" Chiaotzu shriveled up from the dishonorable and despicable behavior of his fellow member of the Dragon Team.

"Ka-Me!" Krillin put his hands together and pulled them back to his side. "Ha-Me!" a round, blue sphere of Ki manifested in between his hands and covered the entire stage in an outburst of blinding, azure light that sent Mera hissing and reeling back in disgust. The Kamehameha dispersed immediately when Krillin straightened his back out and abandoned his fighting pose in confusion at what he just saw.

"Huh? What's wrong with you?" he pointed his finger at Mera. "Is all that power making you constipated or something?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Mera shook her fist out in front of her while lashing out at the rude human. "It's that despicable light show of yours!"

"Eh? You mean you don't like bright lights too much?" Krillin scratched his head and then looked up at the sky. "Come to think of it, the skies have been pretty lousy and gloomy lately and even Upa was unable of fixing them with his magic. You guys wouldn't have had something to do with that, would you?"

"Hmph… So you have discovered it, human… That's right, we demons from the Demon Realm are not too receptive to natural bright lights. Sunlight and even the light of life itself weaken us. That is why we have made efforts to adapt your world to our needs for months before invading, just to make sure that your bothersome sunlight wouldn't get in the way." Demon King Shura explained.

"Oh, I see…" Krillin scratched his head and then put his hands up over his head. "Solar Fist!" he yelled out, provoking a radiant surge of white light to fire out and blind everyone in the vicinity. Mera hissed and screamed out in pain as the crimson outburst of Dead Zone's aura puffed away in smoke. She covered up her eyes and continued to wail as if the pain in her eyes was sufficient to outright claw them out.

The bald martial artist rushed at his subdued opponent and delivered a powerful and focused cross to her mid-section. Mera's eyes shot wide open, whited out while her usually elegant face twisted out in a dishonorable expression of pain which did her aura of dignity no favors. In a single breath, the demoness wheezed out all of her air while she flew right out the ring and landed at the lawn on the other side sprawled out and twitching in pain which resonated throughout her entire body.

"Ring Out! Contestant Krillin has won the battle!" the announcer raised his fist up into the air. "After a stalemate in the first match, humanity has won its first match with contestant Krillin carrying his bold performance onward to the next round!"

"Teehee…" Krillin rubbed the shapeless area where his nose should have been, looking all too proud of the fact that he had figured out such a method of dealing with the immense power-up of his opponent with a single flash of light.

"Interesting, it appears that the demons require to actively focus on drawing the power from the Dead Zone. That is why Krillin stressing Mera out by exposing her to her natural weakness forced almost all of her strength to dissipate…" Tenshinhan observed. "Using natural light was the obvious solution but I cannot help but admire Krillin's method of thinking."

"Of course, he did use our technique, after all!" Chiaotzu nodded with a blank expression.

"I cannot believe it, both of my precious subordinates defeated…" Demon King Shura growled with his fist clutching hard enough to draw his own blood. "Not to mention, the fact that these humans appear capable of drawing from the power of sunlight itself somehow, even if I do make my own way onto the stage, even I shall be easily defeated."

"Hmph… Then perhaps you allow my crew to deal with this little pest infestation problem you have there, oh Great Demon King!" Garlick Jr. smirked and raised his arm to point toward his crew of chuckling minions.

"B-But the sunlight technique…" Demon King Shura shook in his boots.

"Does not affect my crew whatsoever. I have spent ample time on Earth, my demons have grown accustomed to the sunlight and my father has lived and trained on the God Temple for decades preparing for the God Trials. Immunity to sunlight is within my blood." Garlick Jr. laughed out after seeing one obvious strength he possesses over the mighty Demon King.

"Piccolo Jr…" Shura turned to his ace fighter. "The plan is to save you for last."

"That's fine by me." Piccolo Jr. nodded with a grumpy expression. "Let those humans decimate Garlick Jr.'s crew and waste all of their measly power trying to do so. I'll take care of Son Goku and what's left of them after. Don't you dare mock me thinking for a second that something as trivial as sunlight bothers me, the reincarnation of the Great Demon King Piccolo!"

"Very well, Garlick Jr. you may send your henchman to battle in my stead." Demon King Shura nodded, approving of Garlick Jr.'s declaration.

"Ginger! Make sure to kill this human. It doesn't matter if you get disqualified…" Garlick Jr. chuckled. "I'm more than willing to finish off the few stragglers that remain after you three have your fun."

"Yes!" Ginger, a short demon of dark olive skin, skull-like nose and a general appearance of a bald bat with red eyes smiled with malicious intent oozing from him and leaped onto the fighting stage. With a beam of lightning from his right hand, Demon King Shura rematerialized the wall that Mera had destroyed while pummeling Krillin.

"So I guess there's no use trying to weaken you with my Solar Fist, is there?" Krillin wondered, smirking through the trouble at hand while his eyes appeared strict and analytical of the situation and his opponent.

Ginger grabbed the front of his red cloak and swiped it back, pushing the entirety of his cloak apart and revealing his appearance while his cloak hung and rustled behind him like a cape. His tall, beady skull and pointy, long ears now were out in the open for all to see. A true demonling of his master's clan.

Ginger extended his arms to the side and allowed the leaking atmosphere of the Dead Zone to shower him and enhance his strength. The demon grew thrice his size, pumping up with brutality as his upper body grew increasingly misshapen compared to normal body proportions even compared to the other demons that the Dragon Team had seen that day.

"He seems weaker than those two guys before him," Yamcha noted. "I don't think Krillin is going to have that much trouble with this guy."

"Indeed, his strength doesn't seem too impressive even after taking in the Dead Zone's power but… The absence of weakness to sunlight might just cause Krillin some minor trouble. With there being no easy way to beat them, the only way is to just power through them which will wear Krillin out eventually." Tenshinhan stated with a serious expression, looking much less calmed by the seeming lack of fright-inducing Battle Power from the enemy henchman.

"Grilled Pork!" Ginger yelled out while charging ahead at Krillin.

"What kind of battle cry is that?" Krillin leaned back on his right foot, taking on a defensive approach as the enemy's unorthodox battle cry took him by surprise.

Despite the disadvantage he was in, Krillin put up his hands and blocked every single strike thrown his way before swatting the enemy aside with a kick of his own and preparing a comeback attack. Like a red arrow, Krillin rushed onward before Ginger put up his arms and formed an invisible barrier that the bald fighter bounced off of.

"Damn…" Krillin rubbed the front of his head which appeared to swell up with red after hitting the Kiai barrier with his face, completely oblivious and ignorant of its existence.

"Heh heh… Begone, Ginger Buster!" Ginger put his two palms together to concentrate his Ki into a single, pink energy wave aimed right at Krillin. The beam rose up a pillar-shaped explosion and left an entire quarter of the ring decimated with a decent crater looming underneath.

"Did dat bald guy go pop!?" Yajirobe freaked out. "We gotta scram, dose demons are gonna eat us alive!"

"Calm down," Chi-Chi looked at the chubby ronin. "Hasn't Mr. Popo taught you to sense with your Ki and not track the battle with your eyes?"

The rest of the Dragon Team followed Krillin's Ki signature to the skies, where the airborne combatant had his arms cupped up to his side and preparing a Kamehameha during the off-time that the whiff of the enemy's strongest attack provided him with.

"Kamehameha!" Krillin yelled out, unleashing a devastating Ki wave that howled in its pathway toward the enemy.

Krillin landed before his downed enemy and turned back at his folks, giving them the peace gesture. Ginger had still been inside the ring, however, the arena had been totally devastated by Krillin's Kamehameha and therefore Ginger laid on an empty and destroyed patch of land, therefore outside of the destroyed area of the ring. He had won the next battle the moment it started.

"Don't you get cocky with me! Infernal Slasher!" Ginger squealed out after jumping back to life and charging at Krillin, his Magic Materialization ability conjuring up two scimitars which he used to slash at Krillin with a cross-shaped charge.

Having little time to react to the attack, Krillin raised his arm up and shoved it in between the crossing edges of the blades before they came into contact with his throat. Two, even streaks of red ran down his injured wrist but the scimitars popped and broke under pressure while Krillin stared at his opponent with a bemused look.

"I… I… I give up!" Ginger screamed out, fleeing from his grumpy opponent but before he could find solace by his master's undersized lap, the image of Demon King Shura blocked off his retreat. A coil of energy spiraled around his right arm which the demonic fighter held cocked back and ready to strike.

"Demon Spiral Fist!" Shura grunted out and threw his fist out, unleashing a charged-up spiral of Ki at the injured demon and reducing him to shreds of burnt up strings scattered across what remained of the ring after the brief exchange. The Demon King jumped off the ring and extended his arm, allowing his Magic Materialization to materialize the ring back anew.

"Your henchmen will abide by the tournament's rules and bring embarrassment to the Demon Race no longer, Garlick Jr. Stand in line or face the wrath and judgment of the Demon King Shura and his Demon Spiral Fist." Shura put up his duke before Garlick Jr., using his destroyed henchman as an example of what would happen if his demons stepped out of line again.

Piccolo Jr. snickered to himself, having found his superior's show of force toward the irritating turquoise dwarf rather amusing.


	94. The Tournament is in Contempt!

A tall demon with ocean skin and thick, white hair that stood upward like a brush took it on to the stage next. Unlike Ginger before him, this demon did not look like Garlick Jr. at all, except for the color of his skin. He did, however, have a rather sadistic look to his expression. He lacked any eyebrows making his protruded eye ridges that much more apparent. He carried a confident smirk to him as well, despite not appearing that much stronger than his predecessor at all. At least not by a meaningful margin.

"Krillin, are you sure you wanna take this guy on?" Goku asked his friend with moderate elevation to his voice. "You've lost a fair deal of Ki fighting already. You should reserve your strength."

"Oh, you guys want to fight too, huh?" Krillin rubbed the back of his head, seeming apologetic about hogging the entirety of Garlick's entourage all to himself. The bald martial artist chuckled and ran off to pick up his cap. Krillin flicked it back onto his head and secured it with a pair of tight wrist turns before rushing off to the edge of the ring.

"Are you sure about that, human?" Demon King Shura hissed. "If you jump off the ring, you will not be able to return to protect your world!"

"Oh, that's fine. Yamcha and Tenshinhan can handle the rest." Krillin smirked.

"I can fight too, Ten-san!" Chiaotzu cradled his tiny fists and released his inner strength, letting his mysterious psychokinetic power brim on the outside as it has on the inside.

"That may be so, Chiaotzu, but there's something more useful that you can do," Tenshinhan looked to his ghoulish friend. "We need you to use your psychokinetic powers to try and widen the gap of the Dead Zone. I have a feeling that Chayote hasn't wandered off too far off from the opening and a mere widening of the gap might be all that she needs to escape."

"Really?" Chiaotzu wondered, looking at his arms, bending fingers in and out, as if counting them down.

"Yeah, plus, I'm sure it's really dark in there, if Chayote can just get a better look of where our dimension is and where the path only leads further into the void, she'll force her way even closer to the entrance." Yamcha gave the floating, pale dwarf his thumb up of approval.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Nicky smirked. "After all, we Demons are at our most powerful in the dimension that houses us. Given the immeasurable demonic power of the Dead Zone, even a mere widening of its gap will strengthen us even more than it already does."

"Good," Yamcha flexed his wrist while stepping onto the stage in exchange with Krillin. "Maybe it'll make for more of a challenge?"

"What's that, you miserable earthworm!?" Nicky clenched his fists, the leaking energy of the Dead Zone bolstered his swelling strength, expanding the size of the aura that his rampant demonic Ki was able to put out. "I'll have you know that I am stronger than Ginger!"

"If that somehow makes you more confident in your chances to win, you're more clueless than I thought…" Yamcha took a fighting stance adapted from his signature Wolf Fang Fist, never dropping his own confident smirk for a second. It was not often that he got his chance to show off in front of a group of malicious, Earth-conquering demons and the fact that he was now able to play his own part in fending was a source for content with the man who used to be a mere desert bandit.

"Alright, here goes!" Chiaotzu put up his hands and focused on the sky. All of his attention and the limited arithmetic skills that came with it held the rift ravaging the heavens firmly in his focus. It was not an easy thing to take hold of, given how the murky storm clouds covered the sky in entire layers and the red scars merely distorted their color with their own infernal gleam.

"Whatever you are trying to do, I assure you that it is impossible…" Garlick Jr. wrapped his arms over his chest, his fangs looked too long to be contained inside his mouth when it was closed and smiling.

"Wh-What's happening!?" Nicky crouched over and clutched at his abdomen as if suffering from a severe case of indigestion. His shoulders and arms began to swell, his eyes whited out and whatever circulatory system demons possessed became much easier to point and gander at since his vessels popped out and began etching through Nicky's skin.

"What is the meaning of this?" Demon King Shura turned to Garlick Jr. who just shivered as he stared at the tearing Dead Zone wound in the sky. Clouds hurled and whirled in a rampant twister as more and more power of the Dead Zone leaked out.

"He is forcing the Dead Zone open with sheer telekinetic power!" Garlick Jr. took a step back in shock.

"Well, well…" Piccolo Jr. smirked, seeming proud of the fact that this despicable little dwarf got showed up in front of his Demon King. "I guess the little maggot has some skills after all…"

"It doesn't matter, you're wasting your time hoping that your friend will make it out of the Dead Zone by herself and you're just dooming your own competitors by making us stronger!" Garlick Jr. clenched his fist and shook it out at the humans while his own proportions began morphing little by little.

The tiny, turquoise pinch that his fist was before inflated like a blown-out balloon. Some of the residual force of transformation then leaked backward into his forearm and biceps, buffing up Garlick's entire body in the process, increasing his size multiple times over. The skin of Garlick Jr. darkened and his forehead began to shrivel while the emerald spots on his head turned red. Sansho, the third henchman of Garlick Jr's appeared to be pumping up beside his master as well, unable to contain his transformation anymore.

"This power…" Demon King Shura examined his own body, feeling his muscles tensing up rapidly and becoming more defined on the spot while streaks of his bursting veins extended over them. "It is incredible. I now understand why you have chosen to focus your entire growth in that direction, though I'd prefer to be more in control of myself like I was before. This urge to rampage I feel inside… If I spent as much time in the Dead Zone as you and your henchmen, Garlick, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to control it."

"Hmph… A useless transformation." Piccolo Jr. closed his eyes, appearing utterly immune to the enhancing effects of the Dead Zone that took the other demons over.

"No luck, huh?" Yamcha gandered his eyes at the red sky that began to reduce the wine-colored clouds to mere cotton wraps with the overflowing demonic energy that radiated from the Dead Zone.

"Shall I close it?" Chiaotzu lowered his head to look at Yamcha with an intense look of struggle on his face.

"No, I'll manage, let's keep it open as long as we can and hope Chayote can sense us," Yamcha replied. "Who knows, if we fight with all of our strength, maybe she'll feel our Ki and follow our signatures back home?"

"You'll pay for this arrogance with your life, human!" Nicky roared out while charging in a wide stance, attempting to utilize his hulking form in order to decimate the enemy.

Yamcha dashed to the side to evade the charge of his demonic opponent but Nicky vanished in thin air, appearing right behind Yamcha and locking his buffed up arms around the martial artist, attempting to squeeze the life out of him. Inch by inch, Nicky's arms began to move apart. Without betraying his effort with even a single drop of sweat, Yamcha forced the lock open and the arms of his musclebound opponent apart.

"So your speed has dropped, for the most part, I don't see any martial arts skill either. I guess Piccolo Jr. was right, after all, this is a useless transformation!" Yamcha bit his opponent with a verbal jab before unleashing a flurry of wolf-paw swipes at him, Nicky's head cocked left and right, like a rag ball thrown around at Yamcha's mercy and with a single thrust of his wrists to Nicky's chest, Yamcha sent his opponent flying back into the wall protecting the ring area and the backstage area. Into the wall and through it.

"Your Ki swelled up a lot though I can sense it plummeting after just a bit of fighting just as quick. Be careful not to overdo yourself…" Yamcha warned his opponent, teasing him in the process.

"Cocky human!" Nicky roared out after wrestling his way out of the rubble and then taking it to the air while he pointed his palms downward, telegraphic a ranged Ki attack just about as hard as it could have been telegraphed though if King Shura's word was to be believed, he had little control over his fighting style with this much exposure to the Dead Zone. "Lozenges Blast!"

A concentrated and fully-powered, green Ki wave hurled right at Yamcha from up above where Nicky had soared. It smashed into the fighting arena and raised a moderate amount of hell, reducing the entire central area of it to dirty rubble while only the corners remained stationary. Once the smoke and the explosion settled down, Nicky scanned the area with a husky growl, looking for the body of his enemy or at least a sign where to direct his ire next.

"You soar pretty high, but I can take it way higher!" Yamcha teased Nicky with his voice irritating the blue demon from up above than he held his ground. Nicky would have turned his head behind him to meet the enemy had Yamcha's foot not hit him square in the lower back. A storm of kick outright stomped Nicky into the ground that he himself had reduced the ring into.

"Neo Wolf-Fang Fist!" he declared after concluding his fierce storm of kicks and then back-flipped onto the safe corner of the ring to observe his decimated opponent for signs of a comeback. It wasn't that Nicky was not ringed out by Yamcha stomping him into the ground, it was just that these demons have demonstrated to be sore losers in the past.

"Ring out! Contestant Nicky is ringed out!" the announcer pumped his fist into the air. "The winner is contestant Yamcha!"

"You can take the next one, guys, this is all too easy…" Yamcha shrugged after jumping off the stage.

"Tsk! The proud and powerful Demon Race, reduced to a mockery before mere humans!" Demon King Shura twitched in fury. Had he not been a more classic type of demon as opposed to a mutate of the Dead Zone as Garlick Jr. and his lot were, there was not a doubt that he'd have lashed out and attacked the turquoise dwarf and his measly tribe that has brought him nothing but shame so far. "You've failed to recruit the Devil Man and the Devil Tribe into our service, your henchmen had broken the rules of engagement against the humans bringing me shame and they continue to fail in combat!"

"The Devil Man!?" Goku's eyes widened. "You know what happened to him!?"

"That's right…" Piccolo Jr. smirked. "This pathetic excuse for a demon was supposed to recruit him. The Devil Man is a part of a tribe of demons that reside in Hell, instead of the Demon Realm dimension, making them difficult for the rest of the Demon Race to contact. Given how Garlick Jr. and his henchmen were on Earth, setting the seeds for our invasion, they were given the role to recruit him and his tribe to our cause. He failed, of course…"

"I wouldn't call killing Devil Man a failure!" Sansho objected. "He was a weakling, weaker even than a single soldier of your army, he wasn't fit to serve us anyway! You mock us because these humans have bested us, but they've beaten your trusted commanders too, King Shura, and your precious Devil Man had lost to humans long since as well!"

"_**Devil…**_" a resonating grunt echoed through the washing void of the bleeding Dead Zone.

"_**Man…**_" the wailing repeated, gaining a more pitiful and lamenting tone rather than the spice of outrage that the first one had.

"_**Killed…!?**_" a third one drove all the demons and humans alike to gander up at the Dead Zone. Whereas the first resonating echoes may have just been figments of individual imagination of each listener, or so it seemed to them at the time, as more and more lamenting broke out from the void and seeing how it was a delusion they all shared, they've come to realize that it belonged to someone very real.

"**YOU KILLED DEVIL MAN!?**" a vicious and hysterical roar emanated from the Dead Zone, bolstered by its own qualities of reaching out and pulling back into its infinite reaches as the shape of a single, pissed-off Saiyan woman in the opening of the rift, unleashing all of her Ki just to claw and pull out of its reaches with her bare hands until she was free sent shockwaves of emotions throughout the battlefield.

"Chayote!" Krillin cheered.

"It's… No matter, you can't change a thing! You're eliminated already!" Garlick Jr. shook his fist at the sky.

"Chiaotzu, stop forcing the rift open and restrain Chayote instead." Tenshinhan turned to the pale spiritualist doing his best to assist Chayote in her escape.

"B-But… Then I won't be able to keep the rift open anymore. Plus, look at her, she'll just break out!" Chiaotzu freaked out.

"Maybe, but right now she's like a demon herself. I don't think that the Dead Zone would be able to absorb her back if you're not forcing it open anymore and the effort of breaking out of your paralysis should slap some sense back into her." Tenshinhan looked more trouble by Chayote's rampant emerald Ki and spiky, black hair as well as her buffing up shape and whited out eyes. His senses as a martial artist, or perhaps something deeper, spiritual that only his third eye could perceive tipped him off that Chayote the way she was now was more of a hindrance to the Tournament of Doom than help.

"Garlick!" Chayote roared, letting all of her Ki loose and not keeping a single inch of her strength contained.

"That crazy Ki!" Goku's expression that usually seemed in control switched to complete shock, mirroring the fear on Piccolo Jr.'s face on the other side of the arena as well.

"It's so much like younglings to marvel at such earth-shaking power but they're wrong to admire it," even Muten Roshi dropped his façade of an old pervert for a moment while observing the gleaming emerald star descending from the closing rifts of the Dead Zone at a vastly reduced speed as it contended with Chiaotzu's psychokinetic paralysis technique.

"What do you mean?" Oolong turned to the old martial arts hermit.

"I've seen and experienced drastic spurts in power such as these before in moments of sheer rage, they are as great as they are dangerous for once that rage settles down, that surge in power tires the user the same way it would under normal circumstances, except it isn't normal power that they're using. They're breaking the limits of their own body to achieve that strength." Muten Roshi muttered.

"Garlick Jr.!" Chayote roared out again, sending shockwaves that tore Chiaotzu's Psychokinetic grip over her like mere threads and charged onward at the shocked turquoise shrimp. With a crushing blow that sunk all the way through his face, sending the buffed out giant flying back proportionately to the force he had absorbed in the moment of impact, the Saiyan aimed to take revenge for her fallen friend.

"Th… This is ridiculous!" Garlick Jr. wheezed and writhed in pain, struggling to rise to his feet. "Come, announcer, disqualify the entire human team now! Their disqualified competitor is attacking a key competitor of our team!"

"W-Well… That is against the rules…" the announcer fixed his glasses and wiped the sweat off his forehead, trying to work up the courage to tell this hysterical and rampage-prone version of Chayote that she cost the humans their entire world just now.

"Wait!" Demon King Shura raised his hand up. "Garlick Jr. is under no threat. During the time between Demon King Piccolo's demise and our invasion, his goons have gathered the Dragon Balls and made him immortal. He cannot be inflicted with any lasting physical damage. Our demons have stepped out of the line as well, I shall permit Chayote her vengeance for we demons respect such right, as long as humans do not hold our own earlier transgressions against us."

"Th-This is ridiculous!" Garlick Jr. pleaded with the Demon King. "Great Demon King Shura…"

Turning to his monarch, Garlick Jr. saw no mercy in his eyes, shrinking down from his transformation after allowing the Dead Zone to reduce to its previous proportions, Garlick Jr. turned to his subordinate with a demanding look that soon changed to a silent plead as Chayote loomed closer and closer to him, leaving craters in the ground she stepped on whereas her feet touched it. Spiky and floaty black hair and whited out eyes, the face of utter disdain and madness and physical increase in muscle mass similar to that of the demons themselves.

"Sansho… Step in and protect your master!" Garlick Jr. pleaded as Chayote's shadow covered up the crimson gleam of the Dead Zone for him as the hysterical Saiyan warrior loomed over him.

"S-Sorry, Garlick Jr. Master… You're immortal and I would surely die. I still haven't fought in the tournament… I'm just thinking ahead to the bigger picture…" Sansho shook his head out in front of himself, shaking off this responsibility as only a loathsome demon could.

Chayote cracked her knuckles and got to work.


	95. Vengeful Irony

Red stars, minute as a singular dot, sparked in the eyes of Garlick Jr., Chayote navigated around the eye beams even in her blind madness. Unlike before all the training she's done on Earth, now her maddened instincts included martial arts training, it was a fundamental part of her as a warrior and not even in her moment of the most blinding fury did Chayote lose that training.

Her arm wrapped around Garlick's face, shoving it into the ground and dragging it across to the edges of the Papaya Island before lifting the helpless demon up in the air and throwing an explosive cross into the core of his helpless sack, sending Garlick Jr. beaming across into a faraway building with enough force to blow it all up upon impact. Shatters of glass glowed with the malicious reflections of the pink lightning bolts ravaging the skies as Chayote let out a roar, letting her Ki flow free just to let off some steam that's been boiling up inside her.

The eyes of the furious Saiyan were pale white no longer, sense and control returned to her as her swollen musculature had toned down to the levels customary to her. Chayote panted staring at her shaking hands, failing to recall a moment of what had occurred or how she broke out of the Dead Zone. All that stayed with her throughout was the innate knowledge inside that Devil Man was dead and that this despicable dwarf might have had something to do with that.

"Garlick Jr… His Ki disappeared! She killed him in one blow?" Demon King Shura wondered admiring the power of the Saiyan. In her madness and brutality, he recognized the makings of a fine demon, had her humanity not sealed off any chance of such eventuality.

Even with the deep-seated knowledge of her opponent's immortality, Chayote had to wonder if she had destroyed him. It was as the Demon King said, Garlick Jr.'s Ki had disappeared completely for a couple of brief moments but then it all returned to him at once. In a blink following that minute of demise, Garlick Jr. burst forth from the wreckage of the fallen building renewed and completely recovered.

"Well, well… If my immortality did not sustain me, I'd have truly been gone. It was the right move to obtain it, even though you were not the person I'd chosen to obtain it for." Garlick Jr. cracked his neck a pair of times while stretching it out, the force of Chayote's assault before had smashed his skull and shattered his neck in quite a few places before, he must have still felt some specks of itch from what had killed him before his revival.

"So you can't die? That's fortunate for me, I can keep killing you over and over again. I can think of no better thing to do for the remainder of my life!" Chayote growled, raising her shaking hands out in front of her and clutching them in fists as traces of tears appeared on the corners of her eyes.

"Hmph… Are you sure about that? You've lost more than half of your power just after that one attack. Your body cannot seem to afford to sustain your bottomless rage and yet it doesn't seem like you can quite help it." Garlick Jr. taunted Chayote before stretching his arms out to the side. In his shrunken down state, he truly did look quite pathetic though his Ki began swelling up again.

The gap in the Dead Zone widened with each successive twitch, emitting a mighty pulse of malicious, demonic energy which Garlick Jr. felt all too glad soaking up into himself. His core began pumping blood and power incarnate throughout his body and that pumping came to the demonic shrimp in pulses that stayed where they were sent, magnifying the demon's size and buffing him out, his expanding in power and size body once again adopted a darker shade of skin color and colored the pigmentations over his forehead blood-red. The forehead of Garlick Jr. also appeared to shrivel up as even his head appeared to be muscle-bound in this form.

"You were foolish to challenge an immortal being, human, your power is vast but finite. With each strike, you will grow weary whereas whenever I would die – my strength will be restored. This is one fight you cannot win. Once your mighty strength wanes, I will send you back to the Dead Zone where you will have no other choice but let the zone's flows and currents take you to its depths for our battle will have drained all of your strength to resist it and attempt escape." Garlick Jr. looked all too proud of himself and his plan as he flexed his massive muscles and showed off his supersized form to Chayote.

"I'll make you regret killing Devil Man!" Chayote pressed her fists to her side and lunged at Super Garlick Jr. The aegean-colored giant vanished from a clear view and appeared behind Chayote with an elbow strike to her back. Once it had connected, Garlick Jr. took a plunge down to pursue his opponent and grabbed hold of her, smashing into the water together with Chayote while their rumble had erected washing waves and shook the ground on every island submerged in the ocean they plunged into.

Chayote's tail wrapped around the arm that held her head submerged and wrestled her deeper and deeper into the abyssal depths of the ocean and squeezed it hard, she felt it cutting into something warm, warmer than the freezing depths of the ocean they had submerged into but it was as if the demon was utterly immune to pain, he persevered in his attempts to drown the Saiyan and soon enough she felt the dirt of the bottom pressing against her cheek, chest, and knees.

Finally, Chayote's tail found the joint of the arm and wrapped around it, instead of the wrist, she forced it to bend backward and snap. Garlick Jr. bellowed in pain and released the Saiyan, Chayote wished to see his eyes in the abyss but it was too dark. It was of no consequence as she would see them yet. The Saiyan turned her body back and tackled Garlick Jr. with her shoulder, pushing him toward the surface. Chayote threw her arm out and slammed it against Garlick Jr.'s waist, every orifice and hole in the demon's body began shimmering with emerald light as Chayote formed a Ki blast inside his body and sent it flying.

Just as the Dragon Team and the representatives of the Demon Race began to feel curious about the outcome of the brawl, Garlick's body burst forth from the ocean, gargling and bloating it out where the unstable Ki blast made it swell up and rupture, it bubbled like an improperly heated soufflé before rising up to the sky and popping in a resonating explosion that left only mere chunks of the demon to scatter across the ocean.

Chayote rose from the ocean not too soon after, racing for breath as the underwater struggle and the pressure of the depths made her usual limit of holding her breath underwater go way down. Her body had been under stress just dealing with the unnatural and half-baked transformation she had undergone due to her outburst of rage earlier. Now, with the violent and chunky demise of her enemy, the Saiyan found a moment to catch her breath and prepare for his inevitable return.

An arm emerged from the uneasy waves, Garlick's head followed as the demon bellowed in the stress of his sudden resurrection, rising from the depths with a far less restrained and overjoyed expression than his earlier one. It was now Garlick Jr. who felt submissive to the rage of his own. Rage of constant humiliation and unraveling of his plans before him. He had thought that he could wrestle and play around with the Saiyan while her power dwindled to obscurity but now he wasn't so sure he could handle being humiliated thusly for much longer.

"Can't you understand, you nincompoop, I can't die!" Garlick Jr. yelled out, throwing his hand out for a burgundy Ki blast to burst in his hand in Chayote's direction, hitting the Saiyan with a devastating cone of destruction after its detonation which was much harder to evade than a concentrated and round Ki blast.

"I like it that way, honestly." Chayote replied, emerging unharmed from the smoke, it was only her already stressed yukata that had blown off from her chest, leaving only tatters of bandages she wore over her upper body intact. "Things are way too weak and fragile on this planet anyway!"

Chayote rushed onward for another beatdown but Garlick Jr. covered up his eyes in response, when he moved his cross-shaped block away, a flurry of eye beams overwhelmed the Saiyan. Not enough so to cause significant harm to her but enough to keep her murderous intent at bay for a short while.

"Damn you…" Garlick Jr. huffed, when he expended a significant amount of Ki, his body would not compensate it until he had died and regenerated back. Up until now, he got himself killed so rapidly that he had not had the chance to taste the fatigue of battle which was why exhaustion reminding itself to him after a barrage of vicious eye beams hit him with so much surprise. "So I've killed Devil Man, you've killed me twice already, can't we just be square already?"

"Bargaining already? I've died before, it's not that big of a deal, have some dignity!" Chayote let her Ki explode in an aura again before charging at Garlick Jr. Garlick Jr. rushed at her in return, the two traded blows with each other before hitting each other square in the face and backing up, then the two collided again, ramming heads against one another before the shockwave of their collision forced them apart.

"You're already having more trouble than before killing me, you're bleeding strength with every blow you throw and take, I, however, remain eternal!" Garlick Jr. laughed out. "I am repeating myself, yes, though it doesn't seem to be reaching you at all, so I'll just repeat it as long as I have to!"

"It's fine if I'm bleeding stamina as long as in return I can just make you bleed!" Chayote roared out while raising her hand up and pointing the five, bent fingers of her right wrist at Garlick Jr. "Jelly-Beam!" she yelled out as a barrage of fiery beams split off from her fingers and bombarded Garlick Jr. who was forced to cover up and block as they flared up with flames on contact all around him.

A rift of deep-red opened up in front of Garlick Jr., swallowing up the continued barrage of Chayote's Jelly-Beams and sealing them off into the Dead Zone. Seeing how sustaining her barrage of attacks was pointless after Garlick Jr. began sending them off to the Dead Zone, the Saiyan lowered her hand and decided to take a breather. She dreaded the thought of giving that demon a chance to speak again but he wasn't wrong in gloating over his infinite stamina, Chayote could feel strength evaporating from her body with every attack to where Garlick Jr. was beginning to become able to evade death with adequate decency now.

"That's right, did you forget? I can control the Dead Zone as I deem fit!" Garlick Jr. laughed out, looking mighty proud of himself. "How about I give you a little trip back? See if you can fend off its attraction now?"

Garlick Jr. spread his arms out, the Dead Zone over his head disappeared and, instead, a round rift began widening one inch at a time right behind him. Its width increased at an escalating rate, Garlick Jr. stated to be in perfect control of the zone before but Chayote wondered if that was truly the case, given how rapidly the rift began expanding and soaking Garlick Jr. with its deadly atmosphere.

"Oh, yeah! That's true power!" Garlick Jr. cackled with madness and corruption seething from his voice. "I could snap you in your current, exhausted state like a little twig, but with the Dead Zone open this wide, even I have to do my best not to get absorbed!"

Chayote's eyes widened as an idea hit her. She didn't want to win this way. Garlick Jr. still hasn't suffered anywhere nearly enough for what he had done but it was a choice between winning this way or not winning at all. The Saiyan cupped her hands together by her side and focused her Ki.

"Ka-Me!" she chanted.

For now, she could still contend with that overwhelming gravity of the Dead Zone but she would not be able to do that for long. If she was to survive and not get sent to a one-way trip to a void worse than Hell again, she had to hit Garlick Jr. with enough strength, the problem was that with him soaking up Dead Zone's atmosphere so close to it, with the rift being so ridiculously wide, to where it threatened to swallow up the entire Earth in it, not even Chayote's full power might have been enough…

"Ha-Me!" she chanted. It didn't matter if it was enough or not, she'd just hit him with her best shot and deal with the consequences when they came, the way she always did. Earthlings overthought their fighting too much and Chayote was stronger than all of them, though nobody ever accused her of putting all that power to good enough use.

She messed up here. Big time. She let her hatred and rage for the demons get out of hand, she ignored the old-timer's advice and threatened the fate of the entire world with her selfishness. Maybe her flaws were justifiable after the torture in the hands of the Slug Clan she's been through, maybe not, it hardly mattered now. She was strong but she was stupid and her rage always got her all confused, maybe she deserved getting sucked up, right now Chayote didn't feel in control over her own body, her own anger and maybe she was better off away from Earth but now that didn't matter either.

Right now all that mattered was how much Ki she could channel into one, massive Kamehameha. She wasn't even a master of that move, it was just one she picked up along the way, Krillin, Yamcha, especially Kakarot and the Turtle Hermit all could do it better than she could but right now it was the only ranged blast Chayote felt she could put enough power in to do the deed.

"HA!" she roared out, letting all of her stored energy out in a single destructive Ki wave that enveloped her entire body. It was less of a Ki wave and more of a tunnel of streaming, white power that threatened to decimate all in its way and right now Garlick Jr. and the rift to the Dead Zone behind him were all that was in its way.

"Useless…" Garlick Jr. mocked Chayote with a husky tone. "You've wasted too much power beating on me, you've fallen right into my trap. And to think that I've told you exactly what my trap was over and over again – you're such an idiot! So foolish that I think I'll make Earth remember you once I rule as Kami. Idiocy such as this must be remembered and mocked until the end of time."

Chayote yelled out, her muscles hurt as if every single one of them was stretched out from her body and smashed with a boulder. She couldn't move around too much, just thinking about running away or moving against the pull of the Dead Zone made her nauseous. Everything around her went dark, the Dead Zone, in its infinite, expanding hunger appeared to swallow up even the light around it. Oceans swirled in rising whirlpools, arcing straight into the mouth of the Dead Zone, buildings burst into ruin and flew in a rain of granite, glass, and steel, disappearing forever inside the Dead Zone.

Papaya Island had been evacuating ever since the tournament began, even if there were casualties, they were minor but for just for how long. Right now this rift only threatened an area spanning maybe a continent but with the rapid state of expansion… Garlick Jr. didn't want the Dead Zone to swallow up the entire Earth for sure but with his power now being more the Dead Zone's boost than his own strength, just how much control did he truly have over it?

"Pushing me back into the Dead Zone, that's a grand thought but to do that you have to have the strength to compete with mine, now stop struggling and just accept the void before it destroys your precious world. Neither of us wants it gone, I still intend to rule it as Kami, after all!" Garlick Jr. growled at Chayote, irritated that the Saiyan, despite being pointlessly frozen in place in a perpetual lock of no return, refused to accept her slip into the Dead Zone.

"Don't give up!" Tenshinhan's voice made Chayote turn to her right in shock. What was he doing here? Was he truly strong enough to compete with the Dead Zone's pull as Chayote did? It was true that she was vastly weaker now than her full power but surely by coming this close he accepted that he'd get sucked in as well if she fails to defeat the Dead Zone's influence.

"Humans!" Garlick Jr. hissed, "Very well, how about I widen the Dead Zone just a little bit more to make a place for all of you! Screw the tournament, screw the Demon King, I'll swallow all of you up to make things oh-so-convenient for me! That traitor Sansho can go to the Dead Zone too!"

"Not gonna work!" Goku's irritating grunt made Chayote turn her head to the other side as the male Saiyan also entered the zone of no return and began ravaging Garlick Jr. with Ki blasts. They seemed rather effective at pushing him back a few inches but by now he had grown far too powerful for any of them to push him back fully. His Ki had swollen up to the point where Chayote couldn't think of a single entity she had met aside from Lord Frieza that could have pushed the demon back now.

At least his blasts prevented Garlick Jr. from widening the Dead Zone any further like a man submerged and struggling against the rampant river, Garlick Jr. writhed in pain and squirmed in the storm of Ki blasts that Goku kept sending his way but remained in place.

"You fools, all of your Ki will dwindle, mine will only grow stronger! All of you are doomed!" Garlick Jr. yelled threats at them that, admittedly, were quite accurate to the point of being spoilers if something wasn't done about it.

"Chiaotzu…" Tenshinhan turned to face a little ghoulish dwarf floating up to his side.

"Ten-san, I've tried narrowing down the Dead Zone but I can't…" he cried out.

"Then why? Why did you come!?" Tenshinhan grunted at his friend.

"Because… If you are sucked in, I'd rather spend eternity in the Dead Zone with you than live on an Earth ruled by Garlick Jr.!" Chiaotzu declared showing an uncharacteristic amount of emotion for him in his exclamation.

"Tsk… It can't be helped then," Tenshinhan closed his eyes and turned his head away. He reached back into his pocket and pulled out a capsule. Raising his arm up he turned to Chiaotzu. "Chiaotzu, I need you to keep this rice cooker in place with your telekinesis while I perform the technique."

"W-Wait, Ten-san! If it doesn't work – you'll be too weak to resist, you'll get sucked in instantly!" Chiaotzu cried out.

"The Mafuba?" Goku turned to Tenshinhan. "Are you sure about that?"

"You're powerful, Goku, but even you can't fire those Ki blasts at him forever. Even if you could, soon enough his strength will grow to the point where he'll just shrug them off and widen the Dead Zone to cover the entire Earth. It's true that I will be unable to resist the pull after I'm done but it's our only choice!" Tenshinhan replied.

"If you want him to turn that technique back at you, maybe…" a strict and mocking tone coming from behind him shocked Tenshinhan enough to turn back.

"P-Piccolo!?" Goku ceased his Ki blast barrage out of the sheer surprise that the key figure of the invading demon army would come to their aid and enter the event horizon of the Dead Zone.

"Right now Garlick Jr.'s power eclipses your own to where he's going to just reverse the Mafuba and seal you up instead. That's a countermeasure that we have developed against that technique, figuring that one of you hopeful fools would try it." Piccolo Jr. grit his teeth. "You need to weaken him up in order for the seal to work."

"Namekian… Don't think this changes anything!" Chayote growled at him.

"Hmph… Right back at you. It's just that I hate that little, blue shrimp a bit more than I hate you guys. Right now he's threatening the integrity of the world that is the Demon King's to rule. Without combining our efforts, we won't dispose of this pest." Piccolo gave the Saiyan a similarly spiteful look.

"Fine. Chiaotzu, hold me in place. There's only one way of weakening him now." Chayote grumbled. "It's only right that the Devil Man's own technique does this bastard in…"

"The… Devil Mite Beam!?" Piccolo Jr. dropped his jaw.

Chayote felt a tight, telekinetic grip around her body, surrendering some of her control to Chiaotzu's telekinesis as she raised her hands up and positioned them by her temples, channeling her Ki and attempting to purify her heart. She did not need to achieve complete purity, she just needed to be devoted to the effort, pure in her intent to be pure and brim with the desire to expand and spread evil. In her current frame of mind, regretful, vengeful, pissed off, it was like slicing up a pie.

"Devil Mite Beam!" Chayote pointed her fingers at Garlick Jr., emitting a spiraling beam which the entrapped by his own swelling up power demon could not avoid. The dread in his eyes was apparent, he knew this technique and feared it. It was likely that fear that made him slay the Devil Man when he refused to work for him in the first place. The knowledge that there were successors to his mystical technique was a fine spark of hopelessness and despair to carry with him into his banishment.

"The Devil Mite Beam is a mystical technique that locates evil in the heart of the impure, however small, and then expands it to make it explode! My control over the technique is nowhere near perfect but I don't need it to be when I'm firing it upon a literal demon!" Chayote yelled out, just slightly audible over the all-encompassing roar of the Dead Zone's vast expanse. "Even still, I might not have the control and mastery over the technique to make you explode, but it will still hurt, you bastard!"

Instead of Garlick Jr. popping into a stain of blood as the technique disposed of Devil Man's enemies under normal circumstances, a cascade of smaller bursts of blood popping out from Garlick Jr.'s body resonated all throughout, his arms, his chest, even his head had chunks of it blown off all at once, reducing Garlick Jr.'s power to a pathetic speck all at once and while it did not kill him well enough for his immortality to resurrect, it did make him wish that his vast evil would have burst with enough force to finish the job.

"Now, human!" Piccolo Jr. turned to Tenshinhan who popped a capsule and threw it out. Chayote tensed up her body, feeling Chiaotzu's grip on her releasing as the little martial artist focused his powers on an open rice cooker.

"Mafuba!" Tenshinhan raised his arms up, forming an emerald vortex of Ki around him that tunneled and surrounded Garlick Jr. who still wailed in his pitiful and ruined state of being. Trapped and doomed to stay in that state until someone had enough pity to unseal him and finish the deed so his immortality could fully resurrect him.

"N-No!" Garlick Jr. tried to wrestle and reverse the technique but his efforts were spent on wrestling in the losing battle against the Dead Zone's influence. Even if Tenshinhan had not succeeded in sealing Garlick Jr. away, the Dead Zone would have claimed him eventually though it remained unclear just how many more people it would have claimed in the meantime.

Chiaotzu whimpered in a clear evening sky over his head while the martial artists stepping in to dispose of Garlick Jr. and his troublesome Dead Zone all panted and stared at a casual rice cooker floating in mid-air right in front of them.

Tenshinhan grunted and began plummeting down, his body ruined and overstrained by both the competition with the Dead Zone as well as the execution of the Mafuba. Goku dashed in to grab the falling martial artist while Piccolo Jr. swooped in to secure the rice cooker, breaking Chiaotzu's telekinetic hold over it with a decent pull.

While life and the Tournament of Doom were about to resume to their normal processions, Chayote spent a fair moment baffled and staring at her shaking hands, afraid not of the demon she had just disposed or the almost imminent threat of eternal damnation in the Dead Zone she so narrowly avoided but instead of something more primal and all-consuming, something hot-red that blazed inside her and ruined everything whenever it surfaced.

"Come on, Yajirobe has Senzu." Krillin's voice broke Chayote out of her inner struggle against her own body and emotions. Flexing her tired body and cracking her joints a few times, the Saiyan followed Krillin back to the arena.

She needed to see this tournament through to the end, she owed this planet that much after screwing it over just now.


	96. Wives Are Worse Than Demons!

"Are you sure you don't need a Senzu?" Krillin looked up and to his right, even going as far as to lean into Chayote's direct line of sight. Had he not done so, he would have been unlikely to have reached the Saiyan at all. "You wrestled out of the Dead Zone and beat that Garlick Jr. guy down, as expected, you're still as amazing as ever!"

"Hmm? No, I'm fine. I won't be fighting in the tournament anyway." Chayote declined Krillin's question. She forced her lips to part so that her grinding teeth could be made out as a smile. Krillin didn't mean to offend her by suggesting that she didn't get pulled out against Garlick Jr. after messing up, in his Earthling eyes, it truly was Chayote that won against Garlick Jr.

Despite how she wanted Krillin to see her, his words made a trouble stew boiling deep down in Chayote's gut. Did the baldy not see Tenshinhan, Son Goku and even Piccolo Jr., of all people, pitch in to pull her out of a rough spot? There was no honor in being salvaged that way, there was no more embarrassing thing for a Saiyan. Unlike what the popular thought on the matter might have been when viewing it with the knowledge of Saiyans being the warrior race, losing oneself to blind and pointless fits of rage was nothing to be proud of either.

It was because of that rage that Chayote lost control and had to be rescued in the first place, even if the Earthlings didn't view it as a rescue. Such an irritating culture, Chayote felt angry yet had nothing to vent out her rage at. Krillin wasn't to blame for being an ignorant Earthling, oblivious to the Saiyan attitude toward fighting nor could Tenshinhan, Son Goku and Piccolo Jr. be blamed for pitching in for their own reasons.

"That was the Devil Man's technique, wasn't it?" Tenshinhan turned to Chayote. "I have not met the man in question but his reputation as a champion of the World Martial Arts Tournament and the master of the deadly Devil Mite Beam precedes him."

"Yeah… It's a crazy technique, it expands all the wickedness and makes it blow right out of you. The scars of it don't even heal with Senzu!" Yamcha explained while Chayote continued to stare at a blank point in space, somewhere in the sky past Piccolo Jr. who noticed Chayote staring in his direction though looked more curious as to why he was not the object of her obsession but the empty skies behind him. Despite the spark of interest, the reincarnation of the Demon King stood quiet until his Demon King asked him a question.

"You let her practice the beam on you, Yamcha? Don't you know that it doesn't leave anyone alive? No matter how pure a person is, it expands even the tiniest speck of evil to the point of detonation," Tenshinhan appeared dumbfounded by how easy Yamcha had taken the famed technique that the Tsuru Sennin had feared and taught Tenshinhan to revere as well.

"Well, Chayote has never killed anyone with it. I don't think she can expand malice quite that much yet, or I just don't have that many evil thoughts in me!" Yamcha laughed out with his fists on his sides, posing as a righteous and pure hero of justice.

Chayote had never caused that much harm to anybody with the Devil Mite Beam. Had the lovable oaf known that the scars on his face demonstrated the most damage that the Devil Mite Beam had ever caused before being employed against a literal construct of malice and wickedness, he might not have felt as confident in the purity of his heart.

"What's wrong, humans? Send out your next fighter! I'm itching to avenge Lord Garlick Jr.!" Sansho threatened the humans on the other side as he flexed his muscles, having revealed a thick and tough carapace of natural armor covering his body. Like his peers, Sansho had a few similarities to Garlick Jr., in fact, he appeared very much like the supersized version of his master except for the magenta-colored sideburns falling down on his shoulders.

"Alright, I can take it from here!" Goku stretched out his shoulders and thighs after returning from the demon side of the arena after having given Piccolo Jr. a Senzu for the Ki he had wasted while resisting the deadly pull of the Dead Zone.

"No need, Goku-sa!" Chi-Chi stepped out in front of him. "You can leave this henchman to me, you can challenge the Demon King or that reincarnation of King Piccolo."

"Hmm? Are you sure, Chi-Chi?" Goku wondered. "You haven't started training seriously that long ago."

"Don't you dare look down on me, Goku-sa, anybody that threatens our plans for a nice, countryside wedding and the calm and normal family life is in for a beating!" Chi-Chi stepped onto the ring, sealing her participation in the Tournament of Doom.

"Those demons are no joke, I'm not sure Chi-Chi should be challenging one of them already…" Yamcha turned to Goku, appealing to him and his innocent ability to make amends with people offended for breaking the rules. As if asking him to step onto the ring and break a few rules in order to replace his wife in the arena.

"Don't worry, Chi-Chi is no slouch when it comes to fighting. She kept pestering me to spar with her and she's shown some skills." Goku dismissed the matter entirely.

"Plus, this might be the ideal time for Chi-Chi to show the fruits of her training – the Dead Zone has closed, depriving the demons of their boost in power." Tenshinhan pointed out by raising his arm up and pointing at the murky clouds above.

"Heh, against you I'll make it quick!" Sansho taunted his opponent who might have been half his size as he took a wide, wrestling-style stance by spreading his arms and legs out to the sides and leaning a tad bit down to boost the balance of his body as much as possible.

Chi-Chi did not respond. She took a fighting stance of her own that, based on Chayote's knowledge of martial arts seemed inferior to Sansho's. The young woman only used one leg for balance, lifting the other one up and bending it by her chest. One of Chi-Chi's arms bent over her face while she let the other one hang down and to the side. Despite a wobbly sense of balance, Chi-Chi seemed to have most of her slender body protected and one of her legs was already in a position to deliver a kick.

Sansho took charge, dashing at Chi-Chi with his arms spread out. His massive size made moving out of his way difficult. However, he was rushing right at her like a complete oaf, ignoring the dangling threat of Chi-Chi's kick which ended up socking him in the face, leaving a foot-sized indentation in it. Chi-Chi calmly lowered her leg down and took a neutral stance while her stunned opponent jerked in pain a few times.

"Don't let your guard down yet!" Goku warned his wife but it was too late. Sansho grabbed Chi-Chi by her head and flung her out, sending her flying on a trajectory toward the market area of the tournament grounds, way outside of the ring. Sansho put his arms up and unleashed a volley of Ki blasts to chase after his airborne opponent as well, making it more difficult for her to avoid a potential ring out as she still had to deal with the rapid Ki blast volley.

A transparent bubble of Ki formed around Chi-Chi and burst outward as the young woman stopped herself in mid-flight and began swatting the Ki blasts aside one by one. The Ki blasts careening off to the sides and blowing up a random vendor or an abandoned food cart seeing how most locals had fled as soon as possible the moment the demonic invasion began.

"Man, she really underestimated the toughness of a demon…" Goku scratched his chin.

"We've all made that mistake before," Krillin shrugged. "There's no way to learn that lesson but to make it, I guess…"

Sansho vanished from where he stood in the arena. Eyes bulged out wide, muscles tensed up and expression yearning for bloody murder, the demon appeared over Chi-Chi's head while she was still dealing with the Ki blasts of her opponent. Trying to shock her with a surprise elbow drop, Sansho instead found a surprise of his own when Chi-Chi's highly flexible right leg swatted him aside and made him plummet in a diagonal trajectory back down toward the arena.

Sansho grunted in pain but the thud of the crash soon drowned his whining out. Chi-Chi landed to the edge of the ring as well, using controlled and slow flight to get to that point, now wary of just how durable the demons could have been and how unusual their anatomy was. After taking a hit to the face like that, most humans, no matter how powerful, would have flinched and it might have even settled more than a few fights all by itself. Demons were different. Their bodies were built for combat and brutality, there were no vital points to squeeze or soft spots to pinch to make them wail.

The only way to stop a demon was to hit them so hard that even their numb-skulled bodies broke down whole. Smash them to bits with unmatched, superior violence and brute force.

"Damn you…" Sansho grumbled, standing up leaking whatever flowed inside the muscular and unnatural body of his from a smashed skull and battered joints. The few hits Chi-Chi did connect even managed to crack his adamant carapace around the core of his body in more than a few places. "I guess both of us underestimated just how tough the other one can be…"

"Get out of here!" Chi-Chi took her previous fighting stance while urging her opponent to take a hike. "You're embarrassing your mother by bleeding and whining all over the ring. You've lost."

"As if!" Sansho jumped up on both feet and flexed his body out again, letting all of his pent up Ki surge outward in the shape of a bloody aura. "We demons aren't given birth by a loving mother like you pathetic humans are! We are born of violence and ambition, the need for more manpower and more strength! We are born of pure evil and that is all that defines a demon!"

"Explains your lack of manners!" Chi-Chi turned her nose and her chin up at her opponent who continued to declare his intent on dragging this festivity of brutality out longer than his breaking point. "Mothers usually teach their children when they're done."

"Ah, but the fun only gets started when bodies start breaking!" Sansho growled as his muscles began expanding, his carapace cracking from the inner pressure while his skin took a duller hue, turned more to the dark-grey side instead of his natural turquoise appearance. Sansho's eyes whited out while his sideburns started parting and floating about, riding the chaos of his surging Ki.

"Whoa! He's still powering up, nowhere near as he was when the Dead Zone rift was open but… He's just gaining power, almost double what he had before!" Krillin appeared threatened by that prospect even though his own strength far surpassed that of the empowered demon. What he showed was fear of a race that grew stronger in brutality, reveled in combat. It was such an Earthling thing to fear, even when it was of little threat to oneself.

"Unaju Fire!" Sansho yelled out, throwing his arms out in front and shooting a fully-powered, red Ki wave from his hand.

Chi-Chi's image blurred, she continued to appear and vanish all around the Ki wave before swooping in and over Sansho's head, throwing an overhead kick that canceled out his Ki wave by breaking the user's concentration and drove Sansho to the ground. The resonating shockwave from the kick appeared to grind the tiles of the ring to dust and formed a round crater of dirt where Sansho laid sprawled out and seemingly knocked out.

"You don't need to act and embarrass yourself any further. After your surprise early on, I'm tracking your Ki very carefully and I can sense that you are still in fighting condition." Chi-Chi spoke while staring at her fallen and battered opponent. Breaking out of the act, Sansho's whited out eyes regained their normal appearance and his slimmed-down body soon filled up with vigor, prompting the demon to stand back up, albeit just on one knee.

"Tsk… You're a fair bit weaker than the rest. And to think that I'd hoped that I'd be able to catch you off guard with a sword." Sansho bellowed.

"You're unbelievable!" Chi-Chi scolded her opponent and raised up her palm, slamming a barrier of invisible force right at his already busted face. Sansho rolled back and out of the crater from the impact of the Kiai slam just as strong currents of air picked up as a result of Chi-Chi's attack, causing Sansho to cover up just to withstand them and remain in the ring.

The young woman raised up her other palm, channeling a more powerful Kiai blast as she let out a vigorous shout from the bottom of her lungs. The sheer might of Chi-Chi's Kiai totally overwhelmed Sansho, the demon's jaw broke from the intensity of the strength he tried to oppose while his body shriveled up to a pathetic and broken shell of its former might and flew a fair distance out of the ring, lacking any life in his rolled-back eyes to keep going anymore.

"Chi-Chi! Contestant Chi-Chi from the human side is the winner! So far it's been a total wipeout by the humans! The only members of the human team that have been eliminated were those that stopped fighting to take a rest!" the announcer and his declaration seemed to aggravate the lesser demons that became growing unruly on the sidelines. Not even the presence of Muten Roshi amongst them seemed to keep them in line any longer for the Demon Race had shown many things that day, complete obliviousness to self-preservation being one of them.

"We've been utterly beaten!" Demon King Shura grunted, staring at his own shaking fists. "Now even Garlick Jr.'s Dead Zone is gone. Without it, we won't be able to oppose the humans anymore. Their power is far greater than anyone might have thought!"

"Are you giving up already?" the beady eyes of Piccolo Jr. glinted at the Demon King. "You think you'd actually stand more of a chance with that shrimp's cursed sky lingering over you? You're less of a demon than I thought."

The demons on the sidelines, massive and meek alike all began bearing fangs and claws and clattering them against one another in opposition to the harsh words of the reincarnated Namekian. Their moxie was admirable though it took a single look from Piccolo Jr. and the absolute death that they were ready to bring even to his own kind that cooled down the unruly mob of demons.

"Most of their weaklings have already been weeded out, while our chaff is all but gone, they've served their purpose – all that remains are Son Goku's wife, that swordsman with a Lucha mask, Tenshinhan and Son Goku." Piccolo Jr. did an elementary headcount. "Goku's wife had already spent a fair deal of her Ki fighting that pitiful henchman of Garlick Jr.'s. You're the Demon King, act like it, I can't do it for you – I may be the reincarnation of Demon King Piccolo but I am also part-Kami and my nature seems more akin to the humans than the grand and foul personality of a demon."

Demon King Shura straightened his back and nodded, stepping up and taking his place on the stage.

"You're right, Piccolo. I must say, we haven't known each other for that long. A few years is but a blink for a demon's lifespan but you are already one of my most trusted and respected demons. Maybe it's because we've got so much in common, both of us take after the pride of a martial artist and would rather cut off the hand that cheated than shake with it as demons should. Or maybe it's because your incredible power and aptitude for martial arts inspire me and remind me what a true Demon King should be like. I took the position up hesitantly, Piccolo, know that it was always meant to be yours. If only you could have claimed it." Shura lamented while he raised his hand and materialized the devastated part of the ring before focusing on Chi-Chi who still stood in front of him.

"Chi-Chi, you've won already, you can switch out now…" Yamcha teased the young woman who just shook her head.

"No!" she declined. "I am not as strong as this demon but if I can fight him with all my strength, I can help wear him down somewhat. I must pave the path for Goku-sa to win!" Chi-Chi took her fighting stance, challenging the Demon King to a match.

"What an unexpected development, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer had lost himself to the high of his profession, it took him a visual inspection of the unruly crowd of violent demons that he realized just whom he was entertaining and informing with his commentary. It was a bitter pill to gulp down though one he swallowed regardless, carrying on as the professional that he was. "Contestant Chi-Chi will continue to challenge the Demon King Shura!"

"Goku, you can't be okay with this!" Tenshinhan turned to Goku who just shrugged and leaned back on his arms.

"I don't agree with it but I don't always pick smart fights either. Let Chi-Chi have her fun." He smirked.


	97. Overlooked Heroes

Chi-Chi's approach to her clash with Demon King Shura was entirely different from how she confronted Sansho. The moment that the announcer declared the start of the match she vanished, only to appear above the tournament temple level with a dive kick arrowing toward the Demon King. This was her knowledge that she was not capable of beating the opponent and bet only on causing him as much trouble and bleeding out as much of his stamina and Ki as possible talking.

Shura wound his fist back and threw it, coils of air solidifying in mystical energy surrounded his arm and released a shockwave of brute force at Chi-Chi which threw the martial artist back. Chi-Chi cried out in pain as the shockwave hit her in mid-air but she corrected her destination before she could fly out of bounds and forced a landing on the edge of the arena, teetering on it with the entire back halves of her feet before stepping back in.

The young woman clutched her sides and winced in pain. She had spent a fair deal of stamina already fighting Sansho, that was before she chose to challenge an opponent she had no chance of beating even at her best. None of that frightened Chi-Chi, the moment she got used to the pain and pressure, her lips tipped upward and she slid her feet closer toward her opponent. Every bit of energy she made her enemy waste on her was an advantage on the part of her husband and their friends.

Shura charged onward, he did not appear to be enjoying this clash anywhere as much as one would have thought a demon, a being of violence and bloodshed, to be. Shura appeared to call out for a fair and challenging fight, a clash between equals and took little to no enjoyment in testing himself against a partly tired young woman who was never on his league, to begin with.

The human did not answer Shura's assault in kind, she charged on to meet him, the two exchanged blows, scooping and punching through thin air as they manipulated their bodies to evade the opponent's strike at the same time as they delivered their own offensive. The two danced around each other for a couple of series, burrowing through flurries of missed or blocked strikes before Chi-Chi took offensive and Shura adopted a retreating position, deflecting her strikes.

"She's amazing! She's pressing on the Demon King himself!" Krillin exclaimed in surprise.

"I guess the Ox-King had his kid iron out her martial arts skills…" Yamcha crossed his arms, feeling proud of the young woman he once met as just a whiny young girl.

"She's not gaining much in that assault. The opponent is deflecting every strike, she's running through her stamina. Eventually, Shura will find an opening…" Tenshinhan panted through shortness of breath. Chayote turned at him a bit confused as to why the three-eyed martial artist was this worn out. True, he did employ the Mafuba against Garlick Jr. after Chayote devastated his physical body to ruin by decaying it with her Devil Mite Beam but she could distinctly recall Tenshinhan taking the Senzu.

Then again, maybe he didn't? Chayote wasn't keeping close attention to this tournament or what everyone was doing lately. Her own internal issues kept drawing her in.

Tenshinhan's prediction found itself coming to life as jets of invisible gusts of Ki enveloped Shura's left arm, making the Demon King a bit short-handed in having to fend Chi-Chi off with just one hand for a moment. Using his Demon Spiral Fist, Shura thrust his empowered arm toward the ground, unleashing the turbulent rings of energy beneath him and having them surround his entire body as he surrendered himself to their momentum, throwing out a spinning kick while he rode the spiraling outburst of his own Ki.

The kick hit Chi-Chi across the chest, blanking out her focused stare for a second and opening her up for a counter-attack. Exploiting the opening he had just made, Shura made sure to beat the young woman down relentlessly, employing all of his martial art skill that surpassed even the impressive technical mastery of his opponent, employing all of his limbs at once.

The kicks of the Demon King were precise and his move economy was perfect, just when it seemed that his overwhelmed opponent would regain her composure and begin resisting, a push kick to her core drove all air out of her lungs and seemingly broke as much of her spirit as it did shock her body. Before the one-sided beat down would begin seeming monotonous and started to look more like torture, Shura winded up his Demon Spiral Fist with his left arm again as he left the punishment to his kicks. Riding the stream of his demonic spirals, Shura delivered a spinning elbow strike to the side of Chi-Chi's head, seemingly turning her off.

With whited out eyes and a helpless expression, the young woman collapsed on her front. Riding the remains of his Demon Spiral Fist, Shura retreated a few paces back only to press his hands together in something resembling a prayer though what demonic chants the Demon King was mumbling under his nose was unclear due to the unintelligible volume and a mysterious language that he spoke in.

The demonic horde watching from the sidelines began acting out unruly. Throwing their frightening claws pumping in the air and roaring as they began pushing the humans by their side about. While neither Bulma, Launch, the pair of shapeshifters nor Muten Roshi felt comfortable in this vigorous support for the direction of the tournament, they remained composed so to not to trigger a full-out war with the army of demons watching from the sidelines.

"Oh no! Contestant Chi-Chi seems to be down!" the announcer yelled out responding to Shura's strict glare he put his arm up, raising fingers as he counted, adding another finger pointing to the sky with each pair of numbers he counted to.

"One, two!" he began.

Goku ground his teeth but continued to observe the fight from the side. He didn't like the match one bit though Chayote could understand what he felt. Shura did not necessarily deserve backlash from his part, the Saiyan could feel her peer wishing to charge onto the ring and demolish the Demon King but so far the enemy had only done what was expected of him. He just participated in the tournament and, in fact, neither took pleasure nor wished to prolong this match. While this wouldn't have stopped Chayote from killing him, she'd spent enough time around the oaf to know it would prevent him from lashing out.

"Three! Four!" the announcer continued with the count while Chi-Chi showed no signs of life. A puny signature of Ki still rustled inside of her though it was just a meaningless, simmering lick of flames compared to the raging fire she gave out before. "Five! Six!"

It was a bad idea for her to challenge the Demon King. She barely even left a dent in his stamina, not in a way that deserved such a devotion to a hopeless match. If martial arts were a sort of currency in a figurative economy, Chi-Chi had spent far too much for a good way too cheap to acquire under normal means. What she had achieved so far was make the Demon King expend about the same amount of strength as he would have during a warm-up, though he did show off his fighting style some which might have been enough to give a decent martial artist a slight advantage.

Was it truly worth being battered and bruised for though?

"Seven…!" the announcer counted out before stopping as Chi-Chi twitched and pulled her face off the ground. She shook like a leaf, her muscles twitched and seemed to be ready to give out at any inch of her rise to action but she stood back up on her feet and took her fighting stance again. It was shoddy, uneasy but she declared her intent to continue.

"That's enough, Chi-Chi!" Goku yelled out. "I've seen Shura's fighting style, Tenshinhan saw it too! We can take it from here!"

"Wake up, Goku-sa, sense Tenshinhan's Ki…" Chi-Chi panted with something heavy pressing at her chest. It was more than likely that she had more than a few ribs busted and struggled to breathe without causing ripples of pain all across her body. It was a pain all too familiar to Chayote though one that caused a painful surge of memories harking back to her eternity restrained and tortured by Lord Slug's Clan.

So it wasn't just Chayote's delusion. Something was wrong with Tenshinhan. His Ki never truly recovered from after he used the Mafuba even though he took a Senzu. The rest of the Dragon Team all looked at Tenshinhan who looked like he wanted to calm them down but had no words to do so as the pitiful state of his stamina and remaining strength betrayed him. Tenshinhan was in no state to fight.

"What happened? I thought Tenshinhan took that magical bean!" Launch gasped while struggling to stay on her feet against a rude and over-reaching demon.

The demonling made a handful of her blue hair brush against the shapeshifter's nose, prompting a sneeze and a transformation. Upon taking her more outgoing and violent form, Launch began firing on the demons and snapping back at them with vicious elbow slams that made them cower back some though they showed their fangs and claws at the recovering group of humans from a safer distance.

"The nature of Mafuba is that it leaves more than just physical damage to one's body. It is a mystical sealing technique that comes down to sapping one's life force itself. That is not something that can just be dismissed by eating a Senzu, it seems," Muten Roshi replied. "I'm afraid that Tenshinhan might not be able to help us anymore in this tournament, if Chi-Chi falls, it's down to Goku as our last hope."

"So that's why Chi-Chi is putting her life on the line…" Bulma muttered, pressing her hand to her mouth while her eyes gleamed with worry.

"Hmph. You are battered and bruised. Your Ki is at its critical point. If we continue, I cannot guarantee that I will not kill you." Shura directed a strict stare at Chi-Chi who was reeling in pain. "There is only so much that someone of our strength can restrain ourselves, after all. Unless, of course, that is your plan, has been all along. To have me kill you and be disqualified from the tournament?"

"Don't get so full of yourself…" Chi-Chi panted. "I can't die here, I've still got a marriage to attend to and a family to create. I can't do that if I'm dead or if you and your disgusting lot rule over the world. Our children won't grow up in a world ruled over by ugly monsters like you, I won't let you scare them!"

Chi-Chi stumbled forward, by that point she was too injured to rely on the technical mastery of martial arts skill though Chayote noticed something curious in Chi-Chi's movements. Something oddly familiar. She stumbled around in an unpredictable manner, almost like a drunken person. Shura who prepared to exploit multiple opening he saw in Chi-Chi's form found himself on the back foot when he couldn't get a proper read on her movements. The Demon King growled in fury as he was forced to retreat into the air instead of clashing the fumbling mess of movement and risking getting tagged by this odd technique.

"Incredible! Chi-Chi is using the Drunken Fist! This is one technique I'm sure Ox-King wouldn't have shown her!" Muten Roshi exclaimed. "You have to know what being drunk feels like to perform the Drunken Fist, after all, and Ox-King is very strict on not letting his daughter drink."

"Huh… I guess Chi-Chi likens being beaten up and aching all over to what being drunk feels like…" Oolong pointed out.

"Enough! Demon Spiral Fist!" Shura growled while concentrating Ki into his right arm and forming a large coil of energy spiraling around it. The Demon King threw a punch up in the sky, releasing the pent up energy all at once with the spiral expanding and crushing all from up above. Chi-Chi opened her mouth wide but there seemed to be no air in the zone of the Demon Spiral Fist for her to scream, the young woman just collapsed lifeless into the pile of rubble that the arena got reduced into, her legs and arms sprawled out in an awkward angle which suggested multiple fractures all over.

"You!" the Demon King turned to Yajirobe, "Employ your healing magic on that woman at once! I have broken her body to where she would never be able to fight again and she would die soon enough but, if she does, it will be because of your hesitation to heal her and not my fault – I would not be disqualified because of that."

"No way I'm stepping in there!" Yajirobe extended his hand holding the Senzu to Krillin. "You wanna get yerself killed, be my guest!"

Krillin took the Senzu and dashed to Chi-Chi's lifeless body, slipping a bean into her mouth and moving her lower jaw for her to bite it before slipping it down her unresponsive throat. It took a few worrisome seconds but Chi-Chi opened her eyes and sat up. With Krillin's help, she stood back up and gave the floating Demon King an angry stare.

"You were not ready for me. Now begone, woman, I must repair the ring." Shura muttered.

"You did great, Chi-Chi," Krillin tried comforting the beaten comrade. "He really meant it with that last attack, he put a lot of his strength into that last one, you left a dent, Goku won't even break a sweat fighting that guy!"

"If only Yajirobe would man-up and fight!" Chi-Chi gave the lazy ronin a wayward stare but Yajirobe made sure to utilize the mouth hole in his Lucha mask to stick out his tongue.

"I'm sorry… I wasn't aware that the Senzu would not recover my fatigue from the Mafuba. It isn't fair to leave so much on your shoulders, Goku," Tenshinhan turned to Goku.

"No, to be fair, we could have all been more responsible. If all of us went all-out like Chi-Chi…" Krillin sighed.

"You'd have had us go bust with the Senzu. We've only got a pair of them left…" Yajirobe dangled an almost empty sash in front of everybody. "What's with everybody 'ere tryin' ta be heroes!?"

"You're all wrong!" a squeaky declaration came from Tenshinhan's right. "We're not all out of options yet! You're forgetting me, I will fight now!"

"Chiaotzu!?" Tenshinhan turned to his friend. "Are you sure, this is the Demon King we're talking about!"

"I can beat him! I can even leave a dent in Piccolo Jr. too! We don't have any other options here, we can't afford to be picky. The whole Earth is on the line!" Chiaotzu declared, clutching his tiny fists by his sides as he floated out in front of everyone and took his place on the edge of the recently repaired stage. "I've trained all this time alongside you, Ten-san, just as hard as you did! I can do this, I know that I can!"

"Chiaotzu…" Tenshinhan muttered. "You're right, you were always training with me. It was foolish of me to overlook you or to take you as some weak link of the group to be protected. You're strong, I should have known that most of all, as your friend. Forgive me, Chiaotzu, forgive me for overlooking you."

Chiaotzu nodded with a cute smile, his creepy vibe could have faded away in a blink whenever he showed more passion in his eyes than normal. In most cases, the little floating ghoul showed off absolutely no emotion but when he did, all he needed to do was feel and his eyes betrayed it all. Chiaotzu had changed a fair deal since when he challenged Goku three years earlier, the blank and emotionless look he used to always wear as a mask now only surfaced very rarely. Even now, when confronting the most challenging threat he had ever faced he viewed it not with apathy but with drive and determination to take it on and defeat it.

"You? The humans send you against me? I don't blame them for overlooking you, dwarf. You do look quite meek, I'd have confused you for a demon yourself if you didn't stand on the other side of the arena," the Demon King taunted Chiaotzu as he descended on to the other side of the ring and crossed his arms over his chest, preparing to take on his unexpected challenger.

"Oh! What an unexpected development! The human team thought that they only had one challenger remaining when, in fact, they had two! Contestant Chiaotzu has participated in the clash with Garlick Jr., yes, but that was not an official match so he has neither been beaten nor has he withdrawn from the arena just yet. It appears that contestant Chi-Chi might just succeed in reserving her husband a spot to face only the final challenger!" the announcer commented to a crowd of unruly demons.

"Don't make me laugh! I'll remove you from the competition in an instant!" the Demon King growled, winding both of his fists back and circling spirals of energy around both of them while he leaned his entire body back, preparing to unleash all of his reserved strength on this new challenger. "Demon Spiral Fist!" he growled before launching his body at the floating opponent in a rush attack.

Without uttering a word Chiaotzu extended his hands. The Demon King froze in place and the Demon Spiral Fist blaring around his arms dissipated. The Demon King tried forcing his paralyzed body to move, he summoned all of the inner reserves of Ki he had and let all of his power surge outside of his body in an attempt to overpower Chiaotzu's psychokinesis but nothing of the sort happened – the Demon King remained stuck in place.

"Incredible! Not even the feared Demon King Shura can break the psychokinetic hold of contestant Chiaotzu! This here might end up being a very difficult match for the Demon King!" the announcer blared out into his microphone, submitting to the hype that took him over after humanity regained a chance to fight the demons off, a chance rearing its pale and round, one-haired head with red cheeks.

On the demon side of the ring, Piccolo Jr. observed the challenger with a very serious look. There was no smugness in his stare. When he saw Chiaotzu, the reincarnated Demon King saw an actual obstacle and inch by inch the Namekian's Ki began to surge and build-up. As if he was preparing himself to step onto the ring soon enough.


	98. Piccolo Takes the Stage

Chiaotzu vanished with a bright flash of his mental power. The glimmer shocked even the human bystanders as they were usually unable to see most manifestations of Ki. Even other fighters with psychokinetic powers such as Commander Blue weren't powerful enough for the effects of their prominent minds to be visible for all to see.

The Demon King fell on his back, blasted by Chiaotzu's kick which he had no defenses against due to being under complete control of the little guy's psychokinetic grip. Demon King Shura growled and attempted to stand back up, telling himself that he'd make his measly opponent pay for this transgression but each time he managed to wrestle the telekinetic grip covering his entire body back enough for him to rise on his feet, Chiaotzu blitzed past with a stiff kick to Shura's face, his sides or his gut and each kick hit its mark unguarded.

"We won't let you take over the Earth!" Chiaotzu squeaked after rising up into the air above the level of the tournament temple rooftop and pointing his finger at Shura. The cerulean gleam of the little shrimp's power transferred onto the nearby temple and tore it to separate chunks, throwing it about in a telekinetic vortex.

Separate pieces of debris, coated with Chiaotzu's telekinetic energy that made the impact that much stronger than if he'd have tossed mere debris at his opponent and which prevented the debris from falling apart easily, bashed and dazed the Demon King until the vortex of fallen debris ended up surrounding him and raising him up to its epicenter where the dragged in and about debris could have been used to bash against the floating Demon King. All this time, Shura struggled against the telekinetic grip around him too at the same time as being forced to fend off the relentless assault of walls and pieces of the roof.

Even Piccolo Jr. looked astounded by how far Chiaotzu had carried his telekinetic powers, being able to disassemble his surroundings and form entire natural calamities out of the debris, beating an opponent as potent as Demon King Shura without even being forced to lay a hand on him. It didn't look like Piccolo Jr. was afraid of the ghoulish little man but he respected Chiaotzu's psychokinesis alone, if not the entirety of his strength.

With gentle movements of his hands, Chiaotzu slammed the debris against the floating and restrained Demon King and formed a massive ball of compressed rubble, releasing the telekinetic grip for a mere instant and then repurposing it all to drive the floating sphere of rubble into the dirt down below. The hit shook the ground far and wide as if it was a small planetoid that would have hit Papaya Island and not mere rubble.

"Impossible…" Demon King Shura leered at his opponent from a kneeling position. "I… Demon King Shura am pushed to the very edges by a mere weakling human! How can this be!?" the frustrated Demon King punched the ground, growling and reeling in disdain against his doomed prospect for victory. Bruises and lacerations littered his entire body and Shura's movements were stiff and awkward as if his limbs had been broken several times over.

"You're weaker than Demon King Piccolo, there's no way you could have beaten us. Now give up!" Chiaotzu pointed his finger at the new Demon King with a mean expression on his face, meant to frighten his reeling enemy.

"Shut up!" Demon King Shura pounded the ground dirt underneath his fists and knees. He had hit the ring so hard that the supersized telekinetic sphere of rubble had reduced the ring to trash, comparable to the dirt the staff built it on. "It's true that Demon King Piccolo has acquired vast power in his revenge but that power was impure! He fused with Kami to achieve it! A real demon would never stoop so low! Still… For mere humans to surpass the power of demons. That is something I could have never imagined…"

The demonlings in the audience were beginning to grow unrulier still, they were restless this entire tournament but it was only now when they saw their master beaten, bruised and on the verge of complete humiliation and defeat that they began throwing their claws up in the air and rearing their teeth at the cowering humans beside them.

"This situation cannot be helped…" Muten Roshi grumbled, elbowing a pair of overzealous demons and knocking them both out with one strike. "Oolong, Puar, move from the premises and take Launch-san and Bulma-san with you!"

Masking their transformations with the rumbling shockwaves of Muten Roshi's valiant clash against the demons who have now begun to see the stubborn old man in their midst as their mortal enemy, a living representative of the humans they hated and that were now thrashing the reputation of their grand race in the arena, Oolong and Puar took revolting shapes of demons, appearing like red and blue devils while they dragged Launch and Bulma with them, growling their teeth at any little demon hatchling trying to steal the women away from them, acting as if they were their food alone.

"Well, aren't you going to withdraw as well?" Muten Roshi gave the announcer a wayward stare.

"Absolutely not! I am a proud professional of my craft!" the announcer pulled on the collar of his shirt, acting brave even though his forehead was overflowing with sweat.

"So is that it then?" Piccolo Jr. sneered at his mentor who knelt in front of his floating opponent and cursed his fate of being the humiliated and broken Demon King. "Is this all that your proud Demon Race is worth? I see that perhaps my predecessor was right to distance himself from it, even more right when he decided to reincarnate into a true martial artist."

"Piccolo Jr…" Demon King Shura turned around, shocked that his disciple and the hidden ace of the Demon Race was mocking him in the open as he had never done before. Whenever the other demons belittled the reincarnated Demon King Piccolo for his godly upbringing which was now an inseparable part of him, or that the high and mighty Demon King Piccolo who loathed and wished to eradicate all martial artists chose to reincarnate into a martial artist himself, Piccolo Jr. just stood quietly and stabbed the mockery with his beady eyes but he'd never spoken out against the prejudice he had faced. Shura even made sure to protect his protégé from it once he had taken him under his wing and started training him.

"Sure, your opponent is a great deal stronger than you," Piccolo Jr. shrugged, giving Chiaotzu a chilling stare, "that's no reason, however, to give up and writhe like a worm before him. If that is the fate of the Demon Race, to writhe and whine while the martial artists grow stronger and wiser, I'm proud of the decision to be reincarnated into a martial artist. Make no mistake, Demon King, this human was born weaker than you but he has become your superior through hard work and spitting in the face of greater threats. That must be why my predecessor was so adamant about rooting these martial artists out entirely…"

"You're right," The Demon King rose from his knees and faced his opponent. "Even that lowly human woman acknowledged a stronger opponent and yet she continued to oppose me, bringing my power down even further and making it even easier for this dwarf to bully me into submission… Of what use is our pride if it only makes us weaker, if it holds us back?"

"You're no Demon King!"

"You're a fraud, Shura, a fraud!"

"Get off the ring, weakling! We'll fight it out ourselves!"

"Screw the tournament, we'll water the soil with human blood and seed it with their bones!"

Shura examined his followers that were falling by the dozens in the hands of Muten Roshi who held the front all by himself, having grown supersized and buffed up in order to swell up his entire available strength as well as to gain enough reach to pound and slam every demon in his sight. The Demon King chuckled and took a shaky fighting stance, smiling at Chiaotzu. That defiant smile freaked the floating ghoul out, even when he felt confident beyond measure in his chances to win, his opponent carried a frightening amount of mental strength to him now. It was false courage, a faux replacement for power but it served as something that built the enemy up which meant that it was something to fear, something to respect.

"Have at you, pale, little human. I come at you as a Demon King, albeit, not for much longer, I'm afraid, though I come at you with nothing to lose! Once my superior takes the stage, your puny power difference will make no difference in the end. His power is the greatest, reminiscing of the legendary power of the Demon Kings of the past. Here is my strongest, nothing-held-back, Demon Spiral Fist!" Shura barked out before cocking his left arm back and surrounding it with a demonic spiral of coiling Ki.

Chiaotzu extended his arms as the Demon King charged at him, still carrying his Demon Spiral Fist coiled around his arm and ready to smash, break and shatter. The stumbling and slowed down Demon King slammed into a wall of a barrier face-first. A large box in which he was now trapped, a mime cage of sorts. Unflinching by this new threat, the Demon King's fists went rampant all over the barrier cage. It was once all of his strength was sapped by his pointless labor that Shura's arms weighed down and the demon slumped with heavy panting, unable to break out from the cage though sensing that Chiaotzu had unmade it to preserve Ki, it was as if the barrier had never been there, to begin with.

"You're beat!" Chiaotzu declared while straightening out his body as if he laid himself down in an invisible coffin and sent his stiff and straightened feet crashing at the enemy.

"You fool!" Shura growled, bobbing aside and throwing an uppercut, summoning the last remnants of his Demon Spiral Fist in his left hand and smashing Chiaotzu right in his exposed back to send him flying upward. "A demon isn't beat until their life fades away from their body, unlike you humans, our spirits aren't meant to break! It's something I'm glad that Piccolo Jr. reminded me!"

Throwing his hand out and up, Demon King Shura unleashed a vicious barrage of energy waves from his palms, all arcing and rushing toward his airborne and dazed opponent. The energy waves were the last traces of mean-spirit that the Demon King had in him. After he had fired the last one he could conjure up, Shura fell on his knee and drove his fist down onto the ring for support. His body was so weakened by the hopeless match that blood splashed from his knuckles in the shape of a web across a small circle around his fist where he had bumped the ruined stage.

Once the smoke cleared, Chiaotzu showed himself to be floating with one of his fingers extended toward where the rush of Ki waves came at him with a creepy smile. A measly ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds ran across an invisible barrier, the demonic magic that kept the world submerged in autumnal gloom faded away together with the last remains of power from the Demon King.

Chiaotzu dove down like a speeding missile, head-first into the enemy. In a blink, the ghoulish battering ram smashed his head against the powerless opponent and sent him crashing and sliding out of the ring area. While the exact limits of the ring became difficult to tell after Chiaotzu's earlier telekinetic rampage, the impressive trail that the unconscious Demon King left offered no space for doubt – he was out, no matter where the precise edges were.

"Ring out!" the announcer ruled in favor of the humans. "Demon King Shura lost by ring out! The winner is contestant Chiaotzu!"

"Why you!" the demons grunted, the few that remained conscious and unbeaten were those that were too cowardly to rush at Muten Roshi or those that had only now recovered from being blown away by his power. "Just wait 'till we get our hands on you and that lousy Demon King!"

It seemed as if Piccolo Jr. had had enough at that point. Without uttering a word he rose up from the ground and levitated out in front of the gathering of demons, all of whom cowered before him and appeared shaken by the very implication that he would raise his hand against them.

"Take Shura and get out!" Piccolo Jr. clenched his fist out in front of his opponents. "You've embarrassed yourselves enough today! Siding with slime like Garlick Jr., getting shown up by humans!"

"P-Piccolo, you traitorous bastard!" one demon shrieked out and recovered from his fit of absolute panic but blew up where he stood without there being a need for the scorned reincarnation of Demon King Piccolo to move his finger.

"Traitor? I was never one of you, that much you've made abundantly clear! The only reason why I'm letting you pathetic lot to leave with your lives is that Shura trained me and served useful to me for a time. He freed me from the Room of Space and Time too…" Piccolo Jr. looked down, for a moment it would have seemed as if he'd have missed Shura a little bit and felt genuinely grateful to him in a way which demons would not have understood. "All that's done now. It is the demon way that the strongest rule, this world will now be all mine. And make no mistake, if I find out that you've slain Shura, your miserable pisshole of a realm will be next."

"Y-You'll regret it, Piccolo!" a skinny demon shook his fist while the rest fled like the humans they had scared earlier. There were multiple access points to the Demon Realm on Earth. Fiend Village, the steampunk palace Garlick Jr. and his goons resided in before that day, far in the south-east of the Red Sea…

"I haven't eradicated you worms because you're too loathsome to kill. That's the only thing I regret right now…" Piccolo Jr. grumbled in frustration while watching the beaten and broken demons leave.

"Well then…" the announcer pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his sweaty forehead before looking up into the reborn spring sky. Even with his shades on, the man had to squint a little while looking up, it was something he had not experienced for more than half a year at this point but it was a welcome irritation. "I suppose the Tournament of Doom is over. The world is safe…"

"Safe?" Piccolo Jr. sneered at him. "What gave you that idea? This world is mine, I may not have any rights to claim it but I will take it by force regardless! Don't think that any mere rules will stop me from taking over your world either! I'll kill you lot whether I stand outside of the ring while doing it or not…"

"Chiaotzu, that's okay, Demon King Shura is beaten, the demons have retreated. That's enough, you can step down from fighting and leave it all to Goku now," Tenshinhan asked of his friend, still struggling against the nasty drawbacks of the Mafuba.

"Actually, I'd rather keep the tournament going," Goku smirked. "I'd really like to take on Piccolo Jr. at full strength, but if Chiaotzu still hasn't had enough brawling, I guess it can't be helped."

"Are you insane!?" Krillin freaked out. "Can't you sense how crazy-powerful that guy is!? The only chance we have is attacking him all together!"

"You're not making any sense at all…" Chayote mumbled. "Kakarot has waited for years for this challenge to ripen and present itself and now you want to spoil it?"

"How are we the ones not making sense to you!?" Yamcha took a step back in shock. "Piccolo Jr. is way more powerful than any one of us! None of us can fight anymore anyway, you may have been a fair challenge to him at full strength but…"

Yamcha whited out for a blink and reeled on his knees in pain. With a quaking body, he looked up with the blurry vision, seeing Chayote looming over him with her fist still extended to where his gut was when she hit him.

"Shut up, you dolt. Don't you think I know that?" she mumbled with a tone that nobody has heard from Chayote in years. Most of them have never heard it, in fact, for by the time that they've met the Saiyan she was already goofing around and just acting like a ruthless Saiyan warrior threatening to kill everybody. This tone of voice she addressed Yamcha with had nothing in it that suggested an act.

"Hmph… Leave something for Piccolo ta do, don't kill yerselves!" Yajirobe made fun of the Dragon Team's feud from the sidelines, wanting to have absolutely nothing to do with the fight against Piccolo Jr. judging from the way he stood aside from the humans with his arms crossed over his chest and moved closed to the nearest collapsed temple where he could have concealed his presence.

"Chayote," Goku pat his hand on the shoulder of the young Saiyan woman, easing her with his voice. "It's okay, you can take a Senzu but leave this to us. You've had your turn already."

"Kakarot, you dumbass!" Chayote grumbled and turned away. "Clueless as usual, Chi-Chi's gonna kill you one of these days."

"She just might!" Goku chuckled to himself, "I might not get why you're mad at Yamcha but I'll have to ask you to just sit tight and trust me. We've had a blast training together and I've got crazy strong because of it. It's time to show everyone just how strong. Maybe I can't beat Piccolo Jr., who knows, but at the very least I wanna finish doing what we came here to do and win this tournament the right way!"

"I'm fighting, Ten-san!" Chiaotzu turned to his three-eyed friend with a bold declaration. "Goku-san is right! We've come here to show what we've learned and fight the person we've trained for years to stop. This is what we've all been training for. Right now we're all martial artists trying to prove we're the strongest in the world first, Kami-sama's disciples second. Only when Piccolo Jr. beats the first should he need to see the second."

"Chiaotzu…" Tenshinhan mumbled. He didn't like Chiaotzu's determination to face the absolutely monstrous opponent who seemed to be the most unhinged now than he's ever been but he lacked the strength needed to stop his friend from doing so.

"Hmph… So you're keeping up with this tournament charade, huh?" Piccolo Jr. floated up into the remains of the ring, or where it would have been if Chiaotzu's telekinetic storm hadn't torn it all apart and scattered the rubble. "Fine, shorty, it's your funeral…" he cracked his knuckles.


	99. The Dragon and the Tiger Strike!

Piccolo Jr. opened himself up, placing his arms to the side. It was a dead giveaway of a Ki attack incoming and Chiaotzu looked like he could tell. The poor guy had blue all over his pale face but despite his constipation-mimicking expression, he was adamant about doing his best and weakening Piccolo Jr. as much as he could in order for Earth to be saved from subjugation.

A flurry of chunky Ki blasts each of which was almost as large as Chiaotzu himself left Piccolo's arms as he continued to throw them out without aiming them at all. Despite the release of the Ki blast being lacking in precision, the attacks appeared to correct themselves in mid-air and careen right for Chiaotzu. The Earthling martial artist did his best to evade the barrage of Ki blasts, using his levitation and small size to outmaneuver the attacks but they continued to correct their trajectory, catching him by surprise in the process.

The complete merger of the rushing Ki blasts detonated in a single, widespread explosion comprised of a handful of smaller detonations. Chiaotzu's yell from inside it became overpowered by the hefty sonic boom spreading from the blast, making it feel like one's eardrums had burst from the wave washing past. Tenshinhan stumbled closer to the ring, almost crawling in to defend his friend.

"Wait, Ten-san!" Chiaotzu yelled out. The little fellow got busted open pretty bad during the attack. His hat that concealed his almost total baldness got ripped up to shreds, dirt stains covered both the pale skin of the ghoulish martial artist and his tattered fighting attire while fractures of blood running down the entire body of the injured martial artist showed just how dire his situation truly was. "I haven't lost yet! I can still make him lose more stamina!"

"Chiaotzu, you're gonna get yourself killed again!" Tenshinhan yelled out. Despite his pleading, he was powerless to stop his friend, even by force as had he had enough force to take the stage he would have already. Now it took most of his concentration to not collapse and pass out after performing the Mafuba already.

"Not yet!" Chiaotzu cried out, his body lit up with a vibrant, cerulean glow while he extended his fingers outward. "Barrage Dodonpa!" he yelled out, firing his strongest technique at Piccolo Jr. There was a chance that the reincarnation of Demon King Piccolo would waste a decent amount of his stamina as far as taking on an equal opponent went while dealing with this attack.

It did not seem that Chiaotzu's hopes were justified at all as Piccolo Jr. just swatted the incoming beams aside with one hand with the deflecting hand suffering just mild burn marks on the outer side afterward. The deflected beams scattered around the arena, detonating in the distance when they've traveled as long of a distance as they could.

"I'll have to use that technique, Ten-san!" Chiaotzu looked to the side. One of his eyes was closed as blood from his cracked forehead trickled down over it and it appeared to have been hit by the explosion of one of the Ki blasts in the barrage that had hit him earlier.

"Chiaotzu, no!" Tenshinhan pounded the edge of the ring, hammering his fists down. "You've done enough, give up now!"

The blue glow around the little ghoul intensified. It appeared to seep into the very silhouette, the very outline, and the essence of the pale martial artist. When Chiaotzu's body could no longer support all the swelling up psychic energy, it released it into a burst of round aura, shimmering around Chiaotzu and forming tendrils of psychic energy around him on the edge of where his psychic aura could reach. Branches of energy that caressed the thin air, as if threatening to grab it and rip it apart. Chiaotzu yelled out from the pressure that his own intensifying aura put on his already banged-up body but he managed to contain the energy output.

"What's Chiaotzu doing? I've never seen this technique during training…" Krillin turned to Tenshinhan with a freaked out look on his face.

"He's creating a field of psychic energy around him at the point when he releases all of his Ki. It's like he's using psychic energy to draw out more and more of his energy and manipulate it by force!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth as traces of tears appeared around the edges of his eyes. Veins popped around the sides of Tenshinhan's skull and his entire body tensed up to the limits of his power as if he was sharing some pain alongside his friend. Perhaps their bond was close enough that they were doing just that, in one sense or another.

"That's amazing! I never knew psychic energy could be used like that!" Krillin cheered on Chiaotzu, even though his gut didn't stop telling him something was going wrong.

"No, you don't get it, there's a reason why the body only puts out a certain amount of energy at one time. There's a limit to how much Ki it can handle. By forcing so much energy out this way, he risks decimating his own body with it!" Tenshinhan turned back at the rest of the Dragon Team.

"Don't worry, he doesn't intend on dying out there…" Goku shook his head. He looked confident in Chiaotzu's abilities to handle the pressure, in fact, he was almost marveling it in a way Chayote would have considered ruthless. Although she had to admit – Chiaotzu did have a handle on things in there and he used his psychic energy not only to draw more power out but also to suppress it back down when he thought things got dangerous – he fully intended on surviving this attack.

"Take this! Psychic Explosion Wave!" Chiaotzu flew right at Piccolo Jr., encased in an immovable cocktail of his Ki energy as well as psychic energy necessary to draw all that hidden power out and control it. Piccolo Jr. didn't appear all that impressed, dismissing the threat of the little shrimp altogether. He didn't even break his stance of straight back and his arms back over his chest.

The careening ghoulish martial artist slammed into Piccolo Jr. like a missile of psychic energy and detonated all that he had built up all at once in an awesome display of earth-shaking power. A pulse of energy reverberated through the entire Papaya Island with blue Ki emanating from inside the ripping fissures as a pillar of concentrated energy pierced the sky and blasted off into the cosmos, penetrating the atmosphere like a knife through a thin layer of plastic.

Chayote was blown back by how long Chiaotzu's psychic rampage continued. It was almost as if the mad ghoul had continued to shine and draw his Ki outward in a destructive tear when he noticed that his attack was deemed feeble by Piccolo Jr's arrogance. There was not a single martial artist on the Dragon Team that didn't require to take a step back and brace themselves in order to keep standing. By the time that the blast subsided, it was even more difficult to stay stationary as everybody's bodies became too accustomed to the chaos of the psychic riot around them.

"Chiaotzu…" Tenshinhan muttered, looking at the arena and witnessing the chilling display of his friend, burnt out and unconscious in his enemy's grip. Piccolo Jr. held the exhausted and bleeding out martial artist in his left hand, raised on his eye level as he continued to stare the burnt-out martial artist with his ruthless and beady eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Piccolo Jr. hissed. "This little shrimp actually had some power in him after all…"

"Stop, Piccolo!" Goku stepped up and entered the arena. "He's already done. You don't have to kill him. Put him down."

"Ever the naïve idiot, huh, Son?" Piccolo Jr. smirked at Goku. "Living in a bright and pink-colored warrior where fighting is just for fun, where everybody is trying their best and when it's not enough, they recover, train some more and give their heartiest try again, huh?"

"Contestant Son Goku has come to assist contestant Chiaotzu, therefore contestant Chiaotzu is disqualified from the tournament! The winner is Piccolo Jr.," the announcer commented on the situation, making the ruling official as if the situation wasn't clear enough as it was.

With just a slight twitch of his hand, Piccolo flung the pale martial artist to the side. Tenshinhan kicked off in a pain-ridden flight to catch his injured friend before he passed out. A cruel smirk never faded away from the face of Piccolo Jr., he turned his head at the airborne and powerless martial artist and opened his mouth, forming a mouth blast from his jaws to decimate Chiaotzu's body entirely.

Before he could fire the blast that would have incinerated both Chiaotzu and Tenshinhan who rushed in to save his friend from being hurt even more from the fall, both still in mid-air, the blast faded away and Piccolo Jr. closed his mouth. He scratched his abdomen area with this clawed hang and sighed. Then, the reincarnation of the Demon King removed his torn up cape which had taken some damage from Chiaotzu's attack and entered a fighting stance to take on his shocked challenger.

Goku would not have been in time to save them both, his Ki had been completely suppressed at that moment. It was then that Chayote realized how screwed they might have been. Her fellow Saiyan had not a single ruthless bone in his body, he completely trusted Piccolo Jr. to just let Chiaotzu go and stayed suppressed. Had Piccolo just blasted Chiaotzu away or even turned his attack at Goku while his guard was down – the world might have just been doomed, at the very least, they would have suffered casualties.

"So, I guess there's still some of Kami down there somewhere?" Goku commented on Piccolo Jr. refusing to finish his opponent off as he had originally intended and not even taking a cheap shot at Goku himself during the time when his Ki was completely suppressed.

"Damn that Demon King Piccolo!" Piccolo Jr. grit his fangs. "That goddamned bastard cursed me with that divine essence. It's a part of who I am now! It's even worse than you thought. Kami is gone forever but it's as if whatever influence he had on King Piccolo affected me as his reincarnation as well. Oh well, it wouldn't have been good sportsmanship to blast that shrimp anyway."

"I don't think I get it, is Kami still in there, or not?" Krillin scratched his bald head, confused by Piccolo's explanation.

"Not really. But his fusion with the Demon King appears to have had some sort of effect on the way Piccolo Jr. came out anyway. It's as if your father dyed their hair red and then you were born ginger as well. Technically, you didn't dye your hair red, but the color is still there." Yamcha explained.

"You should be thankful to Demon King Piccolo," Goku addressed his opponent. "If it wasn't for him deciding to fuse with Kami and to make you, his next reincarnation, into a martial artist, you'd have been dozens of times weaker than you are now."

"What a real stand up guy!" Piccolo Jr. mocked Goku's words with a dismissive smirk. "Tainting his entire being, becoming that which he hated the most just for the sake of power, dooming his every future reincarnation to the same fate, the same knowledge of what he did… A simpleton like you has no right to comment on anything he said and did."

"His goon killed my friend, he killed many more and hurt all those innocent people that couldn't defend themselves!" Goku replied. "I've got every reason to knock him and every reincarnation of his flat for that!"

"Oh? How about you try and see just how vast the world of pain I'm going to show you is?" Piccolo Jr. smirked, both martial artists tensed up and slicked their stances up before charging at one another and clashing in the middle of the arena, jolts of lightning cracked out and slithered across the area ripping the nearest rubble of the temple's roof to half and setting it on fire from the point where their elbows connected together.

It was only now that Goku's Ki began to swell up and reach its peaks that Chayote realized that his Ki wasn't enough. Even to the dipped power level of his opponent thanks to Chiaotzu, Goku's full power was just not enough. He was just a little inch short. It was no tragic difference, just a tip to where if Goku played his cards right, if he managed to catch his opponent off guard and display superior martial arts skills and a better array of techniques – he might have just pulled it off.

Goku's fist decked Piccolo Jr. hard enough to almost have the Namekian spit out his teeth. Piccolo's neck stretched out to ungodly proportions after the hit, opening him up for a combination of blows, and Goku was about to deliver. Goku's fist opened up, unleashing a point-blank Ki blast that took Piccolo off his feet and sent him flying, the Saiyan then followed it up with another Ki blast that dug into Piccolo's chest. Goku raised his arm from the elbow up, directing the Ki blast to careen upward to where it could safely detonate.

Piccolo grunted but his grunts got drowned out by the explosion of the Ki blast. His opponent was not yet done, however, he slid across the surface of the decimated fighting ring until he stood directly underneath where Piccolo appeared from the cloud of smoke and began firing Ki blasts upward, looking to hit his falling and off-guard opponent. Chayote couldn't see the transition, she had been tired out by her own fight to keep up but the very next moment after a handful of Ki blasts hit Piccolo Jr. in the back, Goku appeared above him, having vanished and moved there in a snap instant, only to drive both his legs into Piccolo Jr's face with a diving double foot stomp and sent him crashing down.

Tenshinhan returned to the stands with unconscious Chiaotzu in his hands. Yajirobe handed him the Senzu sash without saying a word and the three-eyed warrior took it from him, helping his friend with the last bean in the sash. Placing Chiaotzu down on the still intact step, he left his friend to recover at his own pace while Tenshinhan tuned back into the battle for the fate of the world mentally.

"Goku can do it!" Krillin cheered. "He's keeping up with Piccolo Jr.!"

"It's too early to tell but at least he's not hopelessly outmatched…" Yamcha gulped down in relief. "It's crazy how much more powerful Goku got doing basically the same kind of training he did. Then again, maybe it's because we all did the same kind of training he did that he became this strong? After all, he's had an edge on all of us this entire time…"

"It's still far too early to make those sorts of calls. Though I must admit, Chiaotzu's gambit made Piccolo's tire himself out just enough for this match to be this even, Goku would have struggled without Chiaotzu's trouble." Tenshinhan sighed before turning to his recovering friend. "You did it Chiaotzu, Goku's doing his best now."

Chiaotzu nodded with a smile, he still looked messed up though the blood over his pale skin was dried out and the Senzu would have done little to nothing to help with the dirt all over him.

"That's right! Goku-sa will kick this demon's ass and if he loses – we'll be able to finish him off for him!" Chi-Chi pumped her fist into the air before cheering out for her husband out loud.

The two combatants continued to clash all over the stage, exchanging blows though Goku's superior martial arts skills translated in his performance. It wasn't difficult to tell that he had used the Time Chamber on God's Temple to train with all sorts of finest martial artists Earth had throughout its history and now he was putting all of that knowledge to the test. Piccolo Jr. might have still had a very slim edge on Goku in terms of power and speed but Goku compensated for it with skill.

A flurry of punches followed a pair of effortlessly avoided strikes from Piccolo Jr., a jumping high-kick that sent Piccolo Jr. flying again after Goku's foot dug into Piccolo's chin and dazed him a decent deal. Goku rushed in after his opponent and thrust his hands outward, performing a Kiai blast similar to Chi-Chi's though executed in a more offensive manner. Whereas Chi-Chi always had her Kiai form a bubble of energy, Goku released them as invisible shockwaves from his hands, improving their range and power but reducing their radius of coverage.

The Saiyan let out a battle cry and released a concentrated ball of energy in pursuit of his flying opponent, who had his guard down after being overwhelmed by the Kiai attack. The Ki blast expanded and enveloped the reincarnated Demon King before detonating in a sparking blast. Goku charged in, looking to exploit the moment of weakness after his Ki blast detonated when Piccolo Jr. would be either recovering or plummeting back down. Throwing his arms and legs out in a powerful combination of strikes and kicks, Goku caught his overwhelmed opponent emerging from the blast zone and translated his honed martial arts skills on him before finishing his combination of strikes off with an elbow strike to the gut of the reincarnated Demon King.

Just as Piccolo Jr. was about to fly off and hit the area outside of the ring somewhere at the edges of the Papaya Island, Goku appeared behind him and kicked him back into the vicinity of the ring and saw the humbled Piccolo Jr. slide across the destroyed arena with his face and chest until he had either ringed out or come dangerously close to doing so. The tournament announcer crept up to Piccolo and did his best to tell if the reincarnated Demon King had been ringed out or if he just came close to being ringed out but he genuinely couldn't tell.

That much could have been taken from his very confused expression.

"I'm sorry, contestant Goku, I just can't tell if your opponent is ringed out or not…" the announcer shrugged.

"That's okay…" Goku breathed out a hefty sigh, finally catching a moment to rest up as all the rapid movement and punishing his opponent's improper usage of his vast power with superior martial arts skill drove him into a bit of a need for a breather himself. "I saw him going for a ring-out. I figured he'd try to score some time to recover that way and stop himself at the very last moment so I kicked him back into the ring. It would be silly to think he'd get ringed out so early on into this match…"

"Ringed out?" Piccolo grumbled and rose from being knocked down. He flung aside his torn up and dirty turban that now just had strands of cloth falling over his face letting the unbound turban get in his way by sliding off onto one or another side of the Namekian's head, just getting in the way. "As if I would ever lose to you by mere ring out! Don't you dare think for a second that my revenge and ambition will be stopped by some dumb rules of your stupid tournament!"

"They're important to me. Do whatever you want, I'll uphold the tournament rules until one of us loses," Goku replied with a strict tone. "You've lost a fair deal of power already. If you've got any hidden techniques stored, you may as well show them now."

"Oh? You think you've got me on the ropes then?" Piccolo mocked his opponent with a sharp tone of his voice as he dragged the back of his hand across his eyebrow ridge and his lip that were bleeding. The reincarnated Demon King smirked at the sight of his own blood, realizing that he was being pushed to the edge by the strongest opponent he had ever faced and, unlike his predecessor who would have dreaded such a thought, Piccolo Jr. couldn't stand still in excitement from being able to cut loose and show the full extent of his power off.

"Maybe, maybe not… But if you just rush at me and try to take me on in close combat – you'll lose." Goku shrugged, still wary of his opponent's vigor and keeping his fighting stance ready if he'd need to respond to an attack.

"Oh… You've done it now, I had been saving this technique, it felt bad using it because it felt almost unfair to crush you with such drastic power-up but… It would be so sweet to smash that smug attitude and shove it right down your throat!" Piccolo Jr. hunched over and raised his arms up by his side, unleashing his Ki in a malevolent golden flame that burnt hot-red at the edges of his demonic aura. There was a clear physical strain to the entirety of Piccolo's body, veins popping out, and pumping blood with enough intensity for it to be visible on the outside. A drastic buff applied to the muscles of the reincarnated Demon King as well.

"So you did have something in store, huh? Can't wait…" Goku smirked.

"Just a little bit of a glimpse at the Hell I'll soon send you to. And it's oh-so-beautiful!" Piccolo Jr. sent a malevolent smile right back at his opponent. The silhouette of his body lit up with golden, transcendental light, not too much different from Chiaotzu's previous show of force. However, the Namekian's body appeared to grow with each successive surge of energy pushing his outlines from the inside. It was as if his body turned extremely malleable and required a drastic growth in size to somehow contain the immense boost in power he had been going through.

It did not take long for Goku's excitement to turn into shock and then dread as Piccolo Jr. loomed over his opponent having grown a dozen times larger in a span of a couple of seconds. Piccolo Jr. had been a great deal shorter than his predecessor, though far stronger, yet it had never occurred to anyone that it was because of some sort of transformation that Piccolo Jr. not only did not normally use but one that he could push to far greater heights than the Demon King Piccolo ever could.


	100. Clash Between Heaven and Earth

"Damn, just when we thought Goku put some hurt on him…" Yamcha grit his teeth observing the massive frame of Piccolo Jr. that was still getting used to his new size and power.

"This is crazy! Goku had just gained an advantage and now Piccolo's Ki shoots up again!" Krillin looked more frightened by this transformation and the wasted effort that Goku put into beating his opponent down in the first place.

"It's like Chiaotzu's efforts were in vain…" Tenshinhan agreed with a nod. His eyes looked hazy, it wasn't tough to spot that he was being drawn to the ground and might have just passed out at any moment.

Goku dashed back, avoiding Piccolo's smashing strike downward. A single punch shook the ground underneath the ruined ring. The reincarnated Demon King threw a kick at Goku while he was still airborne, shocking the Saiyan with his speed. Goku vanished just in time and appeared to have taken an offensive approach again after realizing that simply evading Piccolo's attacks wouldn't cut it.

Piccolo belched and staggered back when Goku's elbow hit his solar plexus. A vibrant, cerulean blast of the Kamehameha wave coming from the Saiyan's feet propelled him upward, slamming at Piccolo's chin with the back of his head and throwing the supersized Namekian off-balance. Just when Goku felt confident about having knocked Piccolo out of bounds, his opponent halted his fall in mid-air by employing flight and manipulated himself to face Goku. A pair of arrows of crimson light coming from Piccolo's eyes pierced the space between the two and sent Goku falling down with a trail of smoldering smoke trailing upward from his burnt chest.

"This is just breath-taking, ladies and gentlemen! Both contestants are trading blows evenly, this is still anyone's fight and it's becoming crystal clear that the sleeves of both competitors are still bloating with hidden aces!" the announcer yelled out, just doing his job.

"Ey, you, who are ya talkin' to?" Yajirobe scratched his Lucha mask while looking at the announcer who looked around and realized that there was nobody to witness this spectacular extravaganza of martial arts.

"Heh, took a nasty hit there, Son, think you can move around half as fast with that burn on your chest?" Piccolo taunted his fallen opponent, his voice boomed over the entire tournament area. The supersized Namekian lifted his foot over his semi-conscious opponent, looking to smash him.

Goku appeared to be in for a rude awakening as Piccolo's foot stomped right on top of him, sinking him into the soft dirt and grinding him into it further like a mere pest. The sadistic laughter and gloating of the giant demon almost drowned out Goku's grunts of agony underneath the foot of his gigantic opponent.

"We should scram, dis 'ere's gonna be a massacre!" Yajirobe pointed at the grisly scene of murder transpiring in front of them.

"No…" Chayote shook her head and returned from her sulking back onto tracking the action. "You're still tracking this bout with your eyes. Kakarot hasn't lost that much Ki underneath that foot. He can still recover."

"That's true, Piccolo does have greater Ki but his Ki is also dropping much faster…" Chi-Chi pointed out. "Goku-sa, you must fight back!"

"Interesting, Piccolo's Ki does seem to be fading away as if he's constantly using something strenuous… Maybe sustaining this Giant Form isn't as flawless as it might seem," Tenshinhan pointed out.

"That's right!" Krillin jumped up with a sudden realization. "Demon King Piccolo actually used the Mafuba on Chayote, he was much weaker than Tenshinhan right now but he didn't show any of this exhaustion. I think that Piccolo has the power to rejuvenate, somehow!"

"Interesting…" Yamcha pondered. "In that case, he might be able to create more body for himself to inhabit, growing exponentially by supercharging this regeneration of his. If it is a technique he is using, in that case, it will certainly not be easy to sustain it throughout a difficult battle, even if the surge of Ki is alluring."

"Do you hear that, Goku-sa!? Fight back! Fight your hardest and put him on the ropes!" Chi-Chi yelled out, encouraging her husband. A surge of electricity ran up Piccolo's body. It appeared to not be of the demon's own making since it shocked him in more senses than one. The jolt solidified into an emerald gleam that flickered in between green and purple light, lifting the entirety of the giant's frame off the ground and freezing him in mid-air.

"Bankoku!" Goku's grunt came from underneath the rising giant.

"Bikkuri Sho!" Goku emerged roaring with his body pushed to its limits, tearing his burnt up top off completely while the electrical aura surrounded him as well. Goku sent stronger and stronger jolts at Piccolo and each one of them appeared to be putting more and more hurt on the already overwhelmed giant Namekian.

"Amazing! That is the perfect technique right now, go, Goku!" Muten Roshi cheered from the sidelines.

If Chayote's memory served on when Goku used this technique on her, it was a test of endurance. A shock of frightening intensity that drained both the user's and the receiver's stamina though the immense pain made it unbearable for the target on more accounts than just one. The old-timer was right, Bankoku Bikkuri Sho was indeed the right pick for this time, Piccolo was right on top of him and couldn't have avoided the initial blast that encased him in electricity and now he was stuck struggling against time when he was the one interested in settling this match faster.

"Y-You fool!" Piccolo grunted with a scowl seeping with hatred and torment alike. "You better finish me off with this technique because if I escape…" the surge of electricity was too much for him to finish the sentence as Goku intensified the jolt, burning through more and more of his Ki to apply even greater pressure on his opponent as well.

"Goku has matured so much as a martial artist…" Tenshinhan stated with a glare of admiration dedicated to his rival. "In his childhood he would have instantly gone into Hot-Red Mode, choosing to power himself up when he didn't have enough power, no matter the cost. Now he's pacing himself just right, thinking things through."

"Yeah…" Krillin nodded. "Goku might not be a simpleton when it comes to most things but fighting he excels at."

Piccolo's eyes whited out, his body appeared to go limp and surrender to the electrical surge, his muscles stopped contracting and bulging out and had Chayote lost the ability to sense Ki for a moment, she'd have thought the reincarnated Demon King to have passed out. He wasn't out, quite the contrary, he was no slouch in fighting as well, Shura's school, no doubt. Piccolo surrendered to his opponent's technique, halting his heartbeat to a still minimum so that his body didn't break down, he began getting used to Goku's voltage and he was trying to figure out a way out of his predicament.

It was now Goku who was a hostage to Piccolo, having to amp up his technique and therefore the stamina it cost him to sustain it. For the second time that day, Goku had gained an advantage over his opponent but Piccolo had managed to dig his way out of such a slump once. Resourcefulness was a virtue that neither of these two was lacking in, after all.

Piccolo's Ki disappeared suddenly, without warning. Chayote could feel her eyebrow twitch without her request. She didn't think that the Namekian would kick the bucket so soon, one thing that people aware of the once prolific merchant race spoke of was the unmatched toughness of the self-proclaimed demons. It was shocking, to say the least, to see Piccolo snuffed out so soon. Then again, Bankoku Bikkuri Sho was a frightening technique… No, this was a ploy of some sort, Piccolo must have been focusing his strength for something else.

The electricity surrounding Piccolo and Goku alike faded away, the intense aura of Bankoku Bikkuri Sho dissolved in a jolt that hungered for Ki intake which it no longer received when Goku canceled out the technique. Chayote's jaw dropped – that was naïve! Piccolo recovered in mid-air, his eyes snapped open with the same degree of suddenness as his arms weaved together into a double-ax handle smash aiming at where Goku was standing.

It was fortunate that a stalwart cross-arm block was enough for Goku to stop the smashing impact, even though the resonating force from it wrecked the ground underneath them and sent deepening fissures across the island. The clash was so sudden that Chayote could almost feel the agony that Goku's spine must have been in from stopping this smash.

"Damn it, that was dirty!" Goku growled, still in pain from his struggle against the giant who did not relent in his desire to smash his shorter opponent to bits.

"It's only despicable if it fails! I can't believe you fell for it, you fool!" Piccolo mocked his opponent while applying more force to his push. Then a thought popped in his mind, Piccolo dashed back having recalled how such close contact with Goku ended the previous time.

Goku's arms slumped by his side, shaking. It was questionable if he could have even performed Bankoku Bikkuri Sho from that position and after having spent so much energy to sustain it for so long already but Piccolo wasn't about to take that chance.

"Heh, you've shrunk down some…" Goku mocked his opponent who had returned to a size merely twice his normal size instead of at least ten times the size he had added previously. This fight taxed Piccolo Jr. a fair bit as well, despite his Namekian physiology.

"Hmph… You think you've pushed me to the edge with your pathetic techniques? You seem to have forgotten that King Piccolo reincarnated into the body of a martial artist. I am more than capable of frying you with your own medicine now!" Piccolo raised an eye ridge, scowling at Goku with hatred that only blood enemies could have felt toward each other until their fists laid a satisfying siege on their bodies until the pair could dance no longer.

"No way!" Goku exclaimed.

"Bankoku Bikkuri Sho!" Piccolo exclaimed, extending both his hands outward and lighting them up with an interconnected surge of electricity matching the color of the jolt that Goku used against him. Goku extended his arms outward, initiating his own Bankoku Bikkuri Sho and forcing the two techniques to collide in a chain that canceled the other out.

"I guess using the same technique on you now would be pointless…" Goku wiped the dirt off his forehead from when he was stomped, smirking with excitement that he could no longer settle this fated battle with the same technique from before.

"Such a lethal technique could have only been nicked from the Evil Tribe. It's only right that it is returned to its rightful owner…" Piccolo gloated at Goku, it was true that this technique came with the simplicity that felt almost as if it was natural to him.

"Dat's right, dem demons did use somethin' like dat thing against me…" Yajirobe scratched his chin, recalling his encounter with Cymbal of the Evil Tribe.

"Alright, this is getting pretty fun!" Goku took a wary fighting stance. "Though I'm still gonna win this unless you show me something new."

"Hmph… You still think you're at an advantage over me?" Piccolo laughed out. "The way I am now is called the Great Form. It's is the chosen state of Demon King Piccolo though I've managed to surpass this feeble form. The expansion I've shown you earlier was called the Giant Form. However, that's not the limit to my abilities. Behold the Super-Giant Form!" Piccolo clenched his fists by his side, initiating the same ritual of intense Ki control from before while still in his Great Form, instead of his normal size. This time Piccolo just kept on growing, going further and further up above until his feet barely fit the stage, and Goku was left dangling his arms by his sides, desperate to maintain the balance needed to stay inside the stage.

"I… I still can't tell if contestant Piccolo's foot is outside the ring though it might be…" the announcer fixed his shades, examining the position of Super-Giant Piccolo's foot that was easily as large as he was and at least five times as long now.

"Still think you can handle me, Son?" Piccolo mocked his cowering opponent who couldn't help but just gander at the emerald colossus he now had to deal with. "I assure you, I'll be coming at you with more than just kicks and slams!" his voice boomed over the entire Papaya Island.

"He should have done so in the beginning…" Chayote mumbled. "If he used this form on top of the power he had before this fight wore him out, he'd have been too high up for Kakarot to measure to. No matter his skill, he wouldn't have been able to compensate a difference this steep."

"Maybe not, but Piccolo's not like Demon King Piccolo, you know…" Krillin shrugged. "He's a martial artist now. That makes him stronger but it also makes him think differently too. He's not just into this to win, no matter how it looks. He wants to beat Goku but he also wants to prove himself a superior martial artist on top of having a good time too."

"Still, he's far from honorable…" Tenshinhan hissed at that comment.

"Hey, playing dead is a legitimate martial arts technique too!" Yamcha pointed out. "I thought I'd surprise you guys with something like that too but Piccolo beat me to the punch…"

"Just try and handle this, Son, a Super-Giant Bankoku Bikkuri Sho!" Piccolo roared out and took into the air, due to his size he might have left Earth's atmosphere for all that Chayote could tell. Still, his Ki was swelling up to a frightening degree even though the wear and tear of a climactic battle was setting in on both the fighters.

The clouds had cleared completely. Total silence reigned in, not even a chirp or a flap of a bird's wing could have been audible. Then, a shriek, an all-encompassing howl and a pillar of emerald and royal purple flashes to drown out the entire island, Chayote covered her face, wondering if she should have cleared the island premises but she didn't feel any damage at all, just static building up as an after-effect. It was frightening to think that Piccolo could have mastered a technique he had just copied from his opponent in just his second time using it. He channeled it to just decimate the area of the ring, where Goku would do his best to stay in.

This Bankoku Bikkuri Sho was not just a torturous shock, it was an apocalyptic pillar of concentrated lightning capable of blasting a hole through the entire planet if needed. At this point, it was difficult to say if the same name still applied to this technique. It did retain its continuous effect though, the pillar had settled into a single destructive wave of deadly electricity that continued to pulse with enough intensity that it beamed light through the surrounding fissures, suggesting that it was about to total the entire island if not the entire quarter of the planet while still restrained to only fry Goku.

"He took a mean hit!" Tenshinhan turned half of his face toward the devastating beam of light. "His Ki dropped by almost half…"

"True, but this Super-Giant form, using Bankoku Bikkuri Sho… Piccolo's going to have to put it all on the line, if he doesn't kill Goku with this attack – he'll lose most of his stamina too!" Krillin tried to look at the beaming wave as if looking at it would somehow help Goku pull out a win.

"Where's the announcer, it's getting really dangerous for him here!" Yamcha tried looking around until his eyes settled on Muten Roshi and the announcer hiding behind some stationary rubble with Muten Roshi pulling out from the area after having hidden the announcer to hunker down there with some more hopes of safety.

"Ka!" a resonating roar came from somewhere underneath this blinding wave of light.

"Me!" no matter how much it hurt their eyes to look, how overwhelming the surging Ki from the beam of energy felt, everybody turned toward the drilling pillar of destruction and the lone man sheltered underneath it, shouldering it all so that it does not collapse him too deep down.

"Ha!" Chi-Chi, Krillin, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu all yelled something out in unison but their cries for support got drowned out by the immense racket of the Super-Giant Bankoku Bikkuri Sho.

"Me!" Chayote didn't feel as hopeful about this as the rest, she could compare the respective Ki of Piccolo Jr. and Goku at that moment and Piccolo was still riding the high of his new and buffed up form as well as the boost that using Bankoku Bikkuri Sho gave to his power level as well. Goku was getting continuously ground to the dirt, he had no hope of matching up to that soaring Ki at that moment.

"Super Hot-Red Kamehameha!" Goku roared out from underneath the devastating blast, offering a matching shade of blaze-red that pushed the Super-Giant Bankoku Bikkuri Sho up until the middle in between Heavens and Earth. The two beams continued to drill at each other, neither giving way for a few seconds as both of them spat jets of flames and thunder to the sides, ravaging the island that hosted these two masters of martial arts as the battleground for their meeting.

"Hot-Red Mode! He can do it!" Chayote suddenly realized as whereas the Super Kamehameha still left Goku somewhat lacking in the sheer power department, with the life-risking feat of reckless Ki control her fellow Saiyan had just the nick needed to tip the scales over onto his side. Step by step, Super Hot-Red Kamehameha was triumphing over Piccolo's own all-in maneuver until it took the clash of beams over and blasted off into space, without much care for what or who it took with it.

Silence reigned for yet another peaceful yet brief moment.


	101. The Last Gasp

Goku's muscles twitched repeatedly, as it could have been determined from his distressed facial expression it was an involuntary twitch. While the Saiyan had canceled out his drastic Hot-Red mode and therefore reduced the risk of burning his body out of fluid within a pair of minutes, his build remained in its previously amped up state and continued to pulse as if it was still trying to pump blood to satisfy the needs of his previously amped up body. Needless to say, such demand was causing tremendous stress on his body.

It was because of that reason that the fatigued martial artist stood frozen in the middle of a crater that the stage had become with his arms raised over his head, in the position of the Kamehameha wave that he had just employed to push back Piccolo's attack.

"Impressive, you'd think that somebody with a one-track mind like Goku would attempt to strengthen his Hot-Red mode, try to make it draw out more power from him but he instead chose to learn to exercise control. By learning to tap into it for just a moment, whenever he needs it the most, it makes it much less likely to knock him unconscious if he does not settle the fight with it," Tenshinhan observed.

"Heh, so I guess Piccolo Jr. hasn't learned much, huh? Taken down with the same technique that offed his predecessor…" Krillin smirked, leaning on his hands and looking like it was all over. Goku stared into the sky as if waiting for the exact opposite, refusing to believe that the fight of his life was done with.

It was not the survival or demise of Piccolo Jr. that intrigued Chayote the most. It was what Tenshinhan said instead. About Goku learning to tap into Hot-Red mode whenever he needed it and canceling it out when it would have been harmful. It was a lot like the locals from Planet Beiko could do. It was what she needed the most right now. Her rage was an affliction that took the wheel away from her and drove her at breakneck speeds she didn't know toward the nearest pit to hell. If she could only learn to tap into that rage whenever she needed and stay in control when she wanted to, she'd pose no danger to Earth with her reckless decisions…

"Hot-Red Mode. It's a technique accessed through control over your emotions, right?" Chayote turned to the rest of the Dragon Team, she saw Chiaotzu nod.

"Huh? You mean Chayote doesn't know it? I'd have thought that you'd have been the second one to grab it… Yeah, it, alongside the other Ki manipulation modes is accessed through controlling your emotions. You see, depending on your emotions, Ki can be blazing hot, like fire, or fluid and cool like water. I guess it can be a whole lot of other stuff too, we sort of discovered it through the shock of having to deal with the Room of Space and Time…" Krillin scratched the back of his head.

"That's right, come to think of it, I've never seen Chayote us it!" Yamcha pointed out. "I thought she was just taking it easy with her training…"

If that was the case, then perhaps Chayote's goal now was clear. This time they've managed to avoid certain doom brought about by Chayote's poor impulse control and having her anger dictate her decisions but that would not always be the case, especially if the vision Goku had way back in the waters of the Korin Tower about other Saiyans finding them here on Earth would come true…

Goku exclaimed in shock, his eyes flickered and he finally found the strength to lower his hands. His body shrunk down, all of that amped up power burnt out, reducing the body of the young man into something resembling his normal state, though perhaps even more drained than that. Clutching his ribs, Goku couldn't pull his eyes off the sky and before long the rest of the Dragon Team turned their attention there as well.

"It's… Piccolo!" Chiaotzu pointed at a green dot in the sky. Piccolo had shrunken down to his normal size again, his arm and his leg were missing, his body shook overtaken by shock but, before everyone's bewildered eyes, the reborn Demon King roared out and had new limbs burst forth from the stumps of the old ones while he descended on the other side of the stage to confront Goku.

"That's a nice move…" Goku chuckled with all the severity of having broken past his limits and now having to pay the price while still continuing to fight the toughest challenger he'd ever faced brought with it. "You've lost a whole lot of Ki from it though…"

"Hmph… Don't get cheeky with me, you bastard…" Piccolo growled with a sneer. The damage and humiliation that he had sustained in the hands of this Saiyan had removed any hints of elegance and restraint on his face. Damaged and pushed to the corner he might have been, though Piccolo Jr. was now more Demon King Piccolo than ever before. "I can have twice my current Ki but if I'm fighting with just one arm and one leg – I'd have no chance of beating you in a fistfight."

"Guess not…" Goku wiped the dried out blood off his face and wiped some ash and dirt from it, assuming his fighting position while his entire body begged him to stop. "Still, I'm glad you survived. Life on Earth would have been way too boring without a guy like you and we could still use the Dragon Balls around to bring back all the people that the guys from the Demon Realm have killed."

"Dream on, the only thing you're getting is the few handfuls of dirt I'll offer your corpse that I'll leave behind. Call it a shallow grave, if you will…" Piccolo reared his fangs at Goku and responded with a stance of aggression likewise his challenger.

The two took off at once, emptying their lungs with pride and determination of true martial artists, colliding in the middle and pushing at one another until their might created a shockwave bubble that kept on expanding in size, grinding the dirt underneath their feet down to an even wider and deeper crater. Piccolo's eyebeams just narrowly missed Goku's head when the Saiyan leaned it down and avoided the blast, receiving a knee strike for his forethought but responding with a vicious barrage of strikes that Piccolo couldn't protect from at that moment.

"Wow, their Ki has plummeted so low right now but they're still going at it!" Krillin gasped. While his current level of strength would have made him a sufficient challenger to the level of energy that Piccolo Jr. and Goku had now, the sheer perseverance and determination of the two and the crystal clear desire to settle this matter between them continued to baffle him.

"I can't tell which one of them has the advantage now…" Yamcha wiped the sweat off his forehead, he was getting tired just following this match alone.

"Neither, from the looks of it. Piccolo had grown his Ki tremendously with his Super-Giant Form so to challenge it Goku had to almost break his body to overcome him. In the end, it seems like both their bodies have broken down to an almost matching state of exhaustion…" Tenshinhan observed.

"Say, say… You're a freak just like Goku, eh?" Yajirobe turned to Chayote "Yer energy's all recovered and such, how 'bout ya blast Piccolo right now an' kill 'im just like dat, eh?"

"Don't be ridiculous…" Chayote muttered. "As if I'd ever allow anyone interfere with this fight. Look at it, Kakarot's having the time of his life. If you consider yourselves his friends, you will let him finish this and not finish Piccolo off until Kakarot is done with him."

"Huh? You mean you don't plan on finishing off Piccolo?" Krillin wondered. "I mean, he is part demon… Probably…"

"Yeah…" Chayote nodded. "But… I'm done interfering with Earth's business. I've caused too many problems for this planet already, I need to scram and take care of my own problems before I can set my foot here again."

Before Krillin could try to pry into what exactly Chayote had in mind, Goku let out a proud battle cry and manage to slip in a straight cross to Piccolo's jaw, before the staggered Namekian could even recover, the Saiyan swept at his legs, sending his opponent spinning in mid-air. Utilizing his flight, Goku threw a rising uppercut to take the battle up in the air, continuing to hammer at his opponent over and over again while pursuing him until a high kick sent Piccolo even higher up.

Just when Goku was about to pursue his airborne opponent up above the clouds, Piccolo stretched his body out in controlled flight and recovered, extending his arms out. Trails of lightning ran down Piccolo's body as he pointed his arms down and smirked with all the ecstasy and malice of a sadist about to inflict a great deal of punishment to his unsuspecting victim.

"Makosen!" Piccolo yelled out while a two-handed destructive wave of light overwhelmed Goku and detonated in almost point-blank range. The satisfied Namekian spread his arms apart, taking a few moments to charge up purple energy spheres in each hand that he then unleashed in a barrage of rapid Ki waves fired at a lightning-fast rate, all of them scattered across the area but homed in at Piccolo's opponent before going too off-track.

After the barrage of fully-charged Ki waves concluded, the reincarnated Demon King took a moment to observe the carnage that he had created and sneer at his opponent. Seeing Goku fallen on his back with dirt raised by Piccolo's rampage covering the young man, the Namekian descended not too far away from his opponent and continued to keep his beady stare focused on his panting and injured prize.

Piccolo took a step closer, preparing to torment his sworn enemy further but Goku's body twitched, freezing Piccolo's in place and in a sudden outburst of energy, Goku kicked up on two feet and dusted his chest off. One of his eyes was beginning to swell up and no matter how hard he patted himself he couldn't wipe off some meaner burns, forcing the injured Saiyan to just wince in pain whenever he touched them but Goku looked up at Piccolo with a genuine smile.

"That was amazing, just when I thought I had you on the ropes…" Goku exclaimed in excitement. "We've gotta do this again sometime!"

"Oh? You're implying that you're going to defeat me and survive this fight then?" Piccolo raised a mocking eyebrow, pointing out the fact that he was not the one to fall back down on his behind from the sky in their last exchange.

"That's right, we're just about even at power, you're just a little bit stronger, but the difference in experience and skill between us is clear. Your predecessor has been plaguing this Earth for a long time and I've got the collective experience of this entire planet and its martial arts masters ingrained in me, ready to stop you," Goku stood perfectly still, choosing not to even take a fighting stance. It was not tough to see what he was doing – it was a good idea too as Piccolo did seem like the type of guy to get psyched out pretty easily.

"Tsk, you cocky fool! How about I put you to your grave right now then?!" Piccolo threw his arms back before extending his right one at Goku and wrapping his left hand around his right wrist as surges of Ki erupted from his body, forming a vibrant, golden aura around him that crackled with lightning, intense enough to send the announcer fifty meters away from him down on his butt.

"Go ahead and try!" Goku challenged his opponent, spreading his legs out and crossing his arms out in front of him. In a clever choice of technique, he decided to wait until the very last moment to use his Kiai to form a protective bubble around him and help him in blocking Piccolo's attack as just stonewalling it would have taken everything Goku had.

"I don't get it, he just stated that Piccolo is a little bit stronger than him, then why deal with his technique by just tackling it head-on? If Goku is more skilled than his opponent, he should try to win through skill!" Tenshinhan objected from the sidelines.

"Goku-sa is going to win this, I know! He's waiting to pull his triumph card at the very end, so to not tip Piccolo off!" Chi-Chi pressed her fist to her chest and watched her husband building up energy and resolve to tackle his greatest challenge yet. "Goku-sa, use what I've taught you in Kiai and leave that demon gasping for air!"

"Kiai? It's true that Chi-Chi has the best Kiai out of all of us, I see… So that's what Goku has learned while training with her…" Krillin scratched his chin. "Might not have been the best thing to yell it out loud and tip Piccolo off he's going to use Kiai but… Oh well…"

"Kiai?" Piccolo chuckled, sweating as he pushed his own body to his limit again, building up all the Ki he had and forcing his power level to swell up to heights it hadn't even seen as he prepared his strongest technique. "So you've lost your will to live, at last. That's just fine by me. I've hoped to use this technique once I was done breaking every bone in your body but if you're begging to die so early, I'll show you the mercy I've learned from hosting Kami within my body. Get gone, Explosive Demon Wave!"

An intense sphere of light concentrated from the crackling lightning of Ki around Piccolo's body and grew in size with each passing second. The reincarnation made sure to charge its predecessor's most powerful technique fully and leave not a single ounce of energy that he could have put into the blast in reserve. If the two fought on a neutral fighting ground, Goku would have always had the option of faking his enemy out and diving out of the technique's way but now, if he'd have done so, his wife was standing right behind him with all of his friends located not too far from her.

He truly did intend on taking the blast head-on.

Using one arm for support while the other let his most potent and devastating attack wreak havoc, Piccolo released the wave of energy of incredible power which he seemed to be having trouble even controlling in his hand. The wave seemed like light itself, once dispersing from its user's hand it made sure to spread wide, overwhelm and destroy everything in its path. In the hands of the old Demon King Piccolo it might have had the power to destroy a city or a continent, this power had the might of ending entire worlds and it was all concentrated on obliterating a single, stubborn Saiyan.

The Dragon Team scattered from harm's way, forming Kiai bubbles of their own while Muten Roshi assisted in protecting the announcer with a Kiai bubble of his own as even if the destructive energy was concentrated entirely on decimating Son Goku, the resulting blast reduced the entire Papaya Island to a smoking, rocky wasteland.

"N-No way…" Piccolo's eyes bulged out to an extent that would have been unnatural for a human. His face locked down in shock when witnessing his opponent still floating in mid-air where he decided to confront the entirety of Piccolo's power head-on. "That was all of my power…"

Goku looked shaken by the impact, his body had swollen up again as the Explosive Demon Wave had tested every ounce of the essence of his being and stressed every fiber in his body. Inch by inch, the Saiyan lowered his cross-shaped block and smirked at Piccolo with a triumphant, pain-ridden smile. With the few specks of oxygen he still had in his overstressed chest, the warrior let out a husky chuckle.

"Thanks, Chi-Chi… I might have gotten fried if I didn't learn a thing or two from you…" Goku's body deflated all at once, throwing him into a forward stumble but the martial artist was quick to regain his strength. Just when Piccolo had wondered if perhaps he had scored a successful hit that had crushed his enemy, Goku regained the gusto in his step and charged onward at his enemy, delivering an overwhelming combination of kicks and strikes at Piccolo's unprotected and exhausted body, breaking his arms and tearing lacerations with mere punches and kicks and making the reincarnated demon spit up purple blood as his body gave way to the wrath and will to win that was placed behind the fists of one man.

With a triumphant roar, Goku planted his fist deep into Piccolo's abdomen, driving all will to fight out of his enemy and reducing him to a cradling wimp kneeling on the ground and vomiting his crushed insides while the Saiyan took a leap up into the sky and cupped his arms beside him. The intense cerulean glee shimmered in his hands, just like Piccolo did before him, Goku put all of his willpower and all of his determination, all of the skill he acquired up until this point into one, astonishing attack. The Hot-Red blazes lit up with a scorching inferno that colored Goku's aura and his eyes whited out completely while his skin changed color to a more intense, indian-red color.

"Super Kamehameha!" Goku yelled out as he fired at still collapsed opponent directly underneath him. The flaming blast drowned Piccolo Jr. out like a waterfall drowned out a soul that was lacking in proper discipline and strength to take its washing showers. As Piccolo's body laid sprawled out and decimated on the ground, smoking with trails of steam from his burns that not even the unnatural vitality of a demon could help him overcome, it had become evident that Goku had prevailed.

The powerless but happier than ever hero plummeted from the air toward the ground. Having continuously driven his body to the very limit, the young Saiyan no longer had the strength necessary to move a single muscle but it didn't seem like he much cared. In fact, if the satisfied expression on Goku's face was of any indication, even if he broke his neck on his way down and died the most anti-climactic death ever recorded, he'd have been happy because he'd just had exactly the battle he had expected to have.

From around the falling hero, his friends, his rivals and family raced to him to stop his fall, to congratulate him for becoming the Strongest Under the Heavens and a whole lot of other things on top.


	102. Until We Meet Again!

Subtle, vertical telekinetic waves rippled in circular shapes from the tips of Chiaotzu's fingers. Goku's body froze in mid-fall. Seeing how Yajirobe was too nervous to approach Goku since Piccolo Jr. laid not too far away from him, Chi-Chi snagged the Senzu out of his hands and browsed for a bean to feed her injured husband. While Goku wheezed in the beginning, feeling difficulty speaking, after a few seconds of ingesting the Senzu he chuckled. It was a sign of vitality to follow. Not a handful of moments later from his first expression of joy, the Saiyan jumped on his feet and stretched out.

"I feel amazing! We should give Piccolo one too!" Goku turned to Chi-Chi who clutched her feminine hand over the sack and crossed her arms over her chest, cradling the beans away.

"No way! He almost killed you!" Chi-Chi objected.

"Yeah, but I've gotten way stronger since recovering, I could knock him out easily now if he tried something…" Goku winked with one eye and raised his fist to show off his recovered health.

"Even if you are stronger now, Piccolo has Kami's spirit in him too. He's more than just a strong fighter, he can trap you in a Bankoku Bikkuri Sho or seal you with a Mafuba!" Tenshinhan objected.

"Yeah but Papaya Island would probably be for the better if Piccolo picked himself up and scrammed, rather than if they waited for him to recover and get out by himself…" Krillin leaned back on his arms and looked across the area to where Piccolo laid unconscious and almost crushed into the dirt with injuries only a Namekian could survive.

"Don't forget, Piccolo is now tied to the Dragon Balls too. You can't afford to let him die if you want them around. I'm not roaming the Universe to collect the Ultimate Dragon Balls again…" Chayote grumbled. Chi-Chi looked at her hand that had just clutched the Senzu in confusion as the sack with the beans was no longer there. By the time she realized what had happened, Chayote had flicked a magical bean right into Piccolo's open mouth.

"It might be the right choice but it sure isn't easy to watch…" Krillin groaned.

The beady pupils of Piccolo's eyes came back to life. His revitalized body flexed in tension and the reincarnated Demon King kicked up in one mighty leap. He turned back at the rest of the gathered Dragon Team and reared his sharp teeth at them. His scowl said it all – he knew that his enemy was stronger than him now. Goku might have lucked out with winning against him the first time but his second victory would be much more conclusive. Even if Piccolo did kill Son Goku, he'd wear himself out to the point where any one of the Saiyan's friends could finish Piccolo off by themselves.

"Hmph…" Piccolo grumbled and took off without saying a word. The ground rumbled underneath his feet as he skyrocketed away to an unclear destination. His Ki signature faded away once the Namekian concealed it by suppressing himself. Something told Chayote that the Dragon Team would be feeling that Ki signature every day when the reincarnation of King Piccolo trained.

"This can't be over…" Tenshinhan let out a hefty breath. "Piccolo has some mean genes in him. He's got the toughness of a demon. We can't let up on our training if he ever tries to take over the world again."

"I don't think this is about taking over the world…" Goku continued looking in the sky. "I think that Piccolo's become a whole lot different from King Piccolo. He's a martial artist now, he can't possibly want to conquer the world anymore. It would be too boring for him if all martial artists that can resist him would die. He will challenge us again, I don't doubt that, but it will be to prove he is the strongest martial artist alive."

"We'll see about that…" Tenshinhan clenched his fists and turned around, he'd have taken off if Chiaotzu wasn't turned to the Dragon Team still, prompting the three-eyed warrior to look at his friend to encourage him to leave after him. "I am not satisfied with how this tournament went down either. When we next meet, Piccolo will not be the only one with something to prove!"

Chiaotzu turned to his lifelong friend with a smile and nodded. Tenshinhan's expression softened when he saw warmth in Chiaotzu's face and the two took off together in the direction of the God Temple. It made sense that they'd head there if they hoped to push themselves even further and work even harder than they've worked up until now. No matter how hard they would try though, beating that power gap would not be a simple task to accomplish, it would take a lot more than just sparring once or twice more than usual.

"Well… I think I'm gonna head back to West City," Yamcha declared. Everybody turned to him for an explanation even if nobody was really surprised to hear this. "It seems that Tenshinhan and Goku have this, plus, we've got Chayote around to pitch in too. Bulma's ire is something I can no longer ignore, I'm afraid…" the poor dolt chuckled to himself though he was the only one laughing, the rest looked sorry for his misfortune.

"I don't know…" Goku turned to Chi-Chi. "Chi-Chi wants to get married and start a family life, or whatever… I'm not sure how much training I can squeeze in and how effective it's going to be down here."

"You guys have to promise to visit and train with Goku-sa as often as you can! Goku-sa needs to stay strong so that nothing threatens our home and the family we'll be starting together!" Chi-Chi gave everyone a strict look as if she was demanding it of them.

"I'm beginning to feel bad for their future kid…" Krillin leaned in closer to Yamcha, whispering to him which prompted the past desert bandit to cover his mouth and barely restrain a fit of laughter. It all came to Chayote as ripples of the present, an ability of extreme awareness that never gone anywhere since she's last trained with Fortuneteller Baba.

"Don't count on me to protect your space rock all the time, you fool!" Chayote scolded Yamcha. "As it happens, I'll be leaving off to space and I'm not sure when I'll be back too."

"Huh!?" everyone turned to the Saiyan in shock. "You're leaving!?"

"I've always told you guys I wasn't going to stick around. Dr. Brief must have repaired my spaceship a long time ago already. I've got something in space that I've gotta do," Chayote pointed at the sky with her thumb as if it was something within an arm's reach right behind her.

"Don't worry about us, Chayote," Muten Roshi walked out in between the circle of friends. "We are all martial artists, after all. I am as hopeful about this generation as I am grateful to it for everything they've done to our world and the craft of martial arts in general. Be they married, working, or living normal lives, I have a feeling that none of us will be forgetting our roots. To grow stronger, seek new limits to break through and live one's life to the fullest, that's the only way for a martial artist and one cannot be satisfied with anything less than that."

While Chayote saw the infinite vastness of the universe at her fingertips that she still had to explore in her training, the rest looked up to see the creeping night's sky with all of the blinking in stars as a representation of the starlit path of the future.

* * *

"Huh? Your spaceship? It's wherever you left it…" Dr. Briefs took out his cigarette to blow out smoke into the air of his lab for his air filters to clean up. A tad taken aback by Chayote's visible irritation at the fact that nobody seemed to care enough to recover priceless combination of Earthling and Frieza Army technology, Dr. Brief shook his hands out in front of him in an attempt to appease the vexed Saiyan. "That's alright because I've duplicated and improved on your spaceship a pair of times since you've left."

"Huh? Really? So you've got a handful of spaceships capable of intergalactic travel?" Chayote wondered, impressed by the scientist's ingenuity and handiness.

"Of course," Bulma showed her thumb up with a cheerful smile. "Just like you martial artists have to flex your muscles to say hardy, we scientists have to keep polishing our brains working on something more and more challenging to stay sharp too!"

"Then you wouldn't mind if I took one, right? I mean that's the least thanks I should get for helping restore the Dragon Balls that revived Bulma…" Chayote crossed her arms over her chest, almost expecting the old professor to request something lewd of her as was the tradition with elderly Earthling males.

"Wait, so that's where Bulma was gone off to? I thought she left for a field trip or a conference or something…" Dr. Brief pressed his index to the cheek, recalling the long time that his daughter was gone and tying the knots back together.

"You don't have to rub that in all the time!" Bulma's eye twitched as she contemplated hitting the blunt Saiyan as hard as she could, hoping that the young woman had been suppressing her power and would feel it. "You can take the damned spaceship, take the fastest one for all we care, we'll build a better one in a couple of weeks anyway…"

"Thanks, Bulma, when we first met, I thought you were a shrewd harpy, I'm glad to have been wrong…" Chayote nodded her head, trying to act restrained. A spark of colorful stars erupting from her eyes before the pain of a direct cross to the nose suggested that she did something wrong though.

"You dumbass…" Bulma grumbled but her voice softened at the latter half. The offense stretched out like the longing she predicted to be feeling once the Saiyan would take off. "I have to say, I'm glad I was wrong about you too. I thought you'd be dangerous and couldn't wait for you to finally leave when we first met. Though I never thought I'd feel myself choking up when the time actually came…"

"Oh my, did you eat crayfish again?" Dr. Brief turned to his daughter who sunk her head down in her neck and turned to her old man shaking in fury.

"It's not allergies!" Bulma yelled out while shaking her fist over her father's head. "I'm sad to see Chayote leave, what if she will never come back!?"

"I'd like to… Come back, that is…" Chayote nodded. "It's just that… I've figured something out and I've got to change something about myself before I can return. I've actually given up on joining the Frieza Army, I want to live on Earth now."

"So you're going somewhere on Earth? Oh, I see… A conference maybe? In that case, you should take the airplane, a spaceship would be very impractical for such short-distance trips, plus, I can't for the life of me figure out how to put a stereo system in one of those things…" Dr. Brief looked up, daydreaming about schematics while looking for a suitable gap in the planning to stuff a stereo into. "Those spaceship designs are so streamlined, not a single detail is unnecessary…"

"Ignore him, you don't have to leave though. If you want to live on Earth peacefully, you've more than earned that right already. You've helped make Earth so much safer – you've eliminated the Red Ribbons, helped eliminate the Rainbow Brigade, and helped us stop Demon King Piccolo and the demonic invasion. It doesn't matter what planet you're from, honestly, my own sister is traveling alongside a crude alien as well and sometimes he feels like a part of the family," Bulma tried comforting Chayote though what she saw wasn't even Chayote's true expression. It was just a face she adopted to seem cool and in control, sort of how she imagined cool people like Tenshinhan looking.

"Truth be told, I was wrong when I told you about me and Kakarot. I'm a Saiyan but I might not be like him or any other Saiyan. Something's different with me and I think it might be because of those C-Type S-Cells or whatever… It's just that… I get so really, really mad sometimes and I can't control myself. I've put everyone in danger by lashing out in the tournament and I must learn to control my emotions. Until I feel safe that the Earth is no longer in danger because of my recklessness, I will keep looking for answers in space," Chayote explained. "Up until that point, I'll just keep acting like I think Tenshinhan would act. He's a guy that seems to be in control all the time…"

"I can't say I understand exactly what you mean, alien biology isn't exactly my forte but… I guess if you're having anger management issues, that's something all of us could benefit from learning a thing or two about. Good luck, Chayote, I hope you find what you're looking for and come back here. Come back home." Bulma nodded and took hold of Chayote's hand. It was more than just a friendly gesture, a capsule stayed in Chayote's grip when Bulma stepped away.

"You could definitely use some anger management, ever since you've become a teenager, you've been acting out. If I wasn't so afraid of you, I'd intervene, mother was afraid you'd become a delinquent…" Dr. Brief raised his index up as if making a fair point about some scientific hypothesis. "Though I guess you turned out alright…" he then shrugged.

"So, you've got any hints about where your mysterious secret to self-control might lie?" Bulma looked to Chayote with a friendly smile after sighing at her father's remark.

"Yeah. One of the Ultimate Dragon Balls was on Planet Beiko on the edge of the Frieza Army territory. The locals there could control their emotions perfectly while maintaining perfect control of their Ki as well. It appears those two are linked together. They said they'd train me if I returned, that would be the first place I want to check," Chayote scratched her neck, feeling a bit uneasy about that idea. Ki control was not exactly one of her strengths.

"I see… Well, you should call us all the time then! That way you won't miss out on a whole lot of stuff that'll happen while you're gone. It'll feel like you've never left in the first place," Bulma winked with a cheerful gesture.

"Calling… For no reason at all? That seems crazy enough to be something Earthlings would do," Chayote nodded, imagining Tenshinhan in her head and not seeing an image of him laughing out or mocking Bulma for saying something he thought was silly, "I will consider it," she bowed her head in a respectful gesture.

* * *

"Hey, Krillin, done eating already!?" Goku waved at his friend who was sitting on a small hill and staring at the sky over his head while tapping his bare feet against the grass while his boots and socks laid untied and tossed aside beside him.

"Goku… It still looks weird seeing you in a suit…" Krillin laughed out. It's been a long time since he could smile and laugh without some feeling of something huge on the horizon threatening to squash that smile. Now all he had ahead of him was the natural mysteries the future always held.

"Yeah, I'd take it off but Chi-Chi seems to like it and I promised it to wear her whole day today," Goku sighed and collapsed on the hill beside his friend. A cheerful burst of laughter brimming with Yamcha's voice boasting about something he'd accomplished filled the air behind the two. "Apparently it's this wedding thing…"

"It is…" Krillin nodded. "Chayote took off without even waiting for the wedding. I don't think she'd have liked wearing a fancy dress either!"

"She's pretty smart, she understands about as much as I do about everything around her though she always ends up avoiding the weird or the troublesome promises…" Goku sighed.

"Heh, even if she did make a dumb promise, she'd just not do it, you know," Krillin laughed out. "Though she did promise us to leave one day and whoosh back into the sky she went…"

"Yeah…" Goku nodded.

"The sky… It feels weird, doesn't it?" Krillin rubbed his index under his nose, stroking the tip of his nose as if it felt itchy.

"What does?"

"You know… I could be getting married tomorrow, or Yamcha… The sky is the limit now, after all," Krillin pointed out, letting his toes brush through the grass.

"Yeah, I guess…" Goku nodded. The oaf was always incredibly easy to surprise but he was also the first one to get used to the new way of things. It was more than likely that he had already gotten used to peace and gotten bored of it just like he felt itchy inside of his fancy, white suit. "Do you think Chayote's finding some strong guys to fight out there in space?"

"Sure, that must be why she took off. Regretting getting married and tied up now, Goku?" Krillin turned to his friend with a smirk.

"Nah… Maybe… I dunno!" Goku grabbed his head and exclaimed feeling torn. "This family thing feels kind of new and I do like making Chi-Chi happy because when she's unhappy, I'm unhappy but… I do want to fight some more strong guys too. It would be great if they came down to us, now that we're all getting tied up, you know?"

"Well… There's always another World Martial Arts Tournament in three years. Who knows who might show up there, even guys from the Demon Realm aren't afraid of crossing dimensions to take a shot at Earth…" Krillin laid on his back so that he could get a better view of the evening sky without making his neck hurt. Instead, he noticed the tournament announcer standing behind them, he looked so familiar in a formal getup that Krillin's instincts worked up and forced him to jump up on his feet as if the man was counting down to ten.

"Not in a while, I'm afraid. Papaya Island is totalled, it will take decades to rebuild it…" the announcer fixed his shades.

"Heh, I guess we might need to collect the Dragon Balls and restore it to normal at some point," Krillin squinted at Goku, nudging the newlywed for the second time family man with his elbow.

"I'm not sure what these Dragon Balls are but even if they did restore the island back to normal, it will take decades for the public to visit it again after literal demons invaded it…" the announcer sighed. "I might be out of a job… I figured that's what you two were doing here – lamenting your loss of income. You didn't get paid the prize money for your victory, did you Goku?"

"Nah, though Krillin's right. It all started with collecting the Dragon Balls. I've met all kinds of people and made a lot of friends, met a bunch of strong guys too. It's decided. When it gets boring, we'll just all meet up and collect the Dragon Balls again!" Goku wanted to pull on the straps of his belt but remembered that he was still wearing a suit and his belt was of a different nature.

The two friends of his noticed it immediately and the trio shared a laugh. It was a laughter of no strings being attached and nothing dark looming on the horizon. A rare yet most precious kind of laugh that people only get to have for a few times in their entire lives. A laugh of only happiness that stretches out into infinity and one that would never be forgotten.


	103. The Way Things Work

The rich leafage of Planet Beiko rustled when Chayote's spaceship hurried like a crashing comet through the thick forests, shredding through wood and ripping man-sized leaves off with the ship correcting its course at the very end with a hard steer upward and releasing a quartet of puny landing support legs that dug into the dirt and halted the landing orb enough for the bouncy limbs to retract and for the ship to position its bottom onto the surface.

The ship that Chayote traveled in didn't allow any of Planet Beiko's intense heat inside though the Saiyan was well aware that she'd still need to deal with it the moment she'd open the hatch. When she did, the young Saiyan woman felt surprised to feel that while the contrast of an infernal heatwave striking her head-on was forceful, she could handle the heat of Planet Beiko far better than before.

Of course, since that time Chayote had improved her power level and experienced surroundings of intense heat inside the Room of Spirit and Time. Either one of those could have been the reason why Chayote felt far more functional this time around though the fact that she had spent some time on this planet before and possibly had begun adapting to its conditions might have played a part too.

The Saiyan looked around, taking a brief moment to take a few sniffs of the boiling air that burnt deep into her nostrils and appeared to make one shorter of breath after drawing more of it in. She could sense a handful of different power levels moving around, though the fact that she could sense the signatures suggested that they did not belong to a giant robot that she'd encountered on this planet before.

"So, you've changed your mind about the heat?" a low-pitched voice came from the trees, helping Chayote by directing her eyes toward the nearest warrior of Planet Beiko, one amongst a dozen others. All of them looked rather similar which was understandable given how the locals lacked that many features besides the shape and color of their eyes and the thick lips on their faces.

"Shunabehan told me that you guys would feel honored by training me. Figured that I wouldn't tease you guys for too long…" Chayote breathed out and pocketed her hands. She could feel her power level having drained substantially already and it was likely to continue dipping the more time she spent here.

As much as the Saiyan wanted to play it cool, the moment that one of the Beiko warriors gestured for her to follow and most of them turned around to lead her to their establishment, Chayote zipped off her tracksuit and tossed it into her spaceship before pressing a button on the remote to close it and send it off to space so that it could orbit around the planet on standby.

How the warriors of Planet Beiko could move around and fight as efficiently as they did with so many clothes on was beyond the Saiyan. They wore a number of clothes that seemed excessive even for the northern regions of Earth, adopting turbans, long and baggy attires, and multiple layers of clothes. The locals didn't hurry back, it let Chayote follow them comfortably in her own pace.

"Ah, Chayote, I figured that it was you after seeing the spaceship. We see very few visitors otherwise…" Shunabehan welcomed the Saiyan with a cheerful yet composed smile. The lips of the locals were so thick that they could generally tilt them upward or downward, leaving it to the rest of their face to relay the exact emotion.

"I wonder why…" Chayote shrugged, trying to mirror the behavior and the general vibe of the locals. Her strategy of acting cool as Tenshinhan would have only worked on Earth, where such behavior would have appeared natural. The warriors of Planet Beiko appeared to be a superior temporary replacement, seeing how they resided in a planet of infernal heatwaves. Plus, Chayote would spend a bit more time around them and have them beside her more often, making them a more accessible source for imitation.

"It's because of our legendary warrior prowess!" a warrior with red and blue decorations over his baggy white attire declared while smacking his chest with open palms to demonstrate his hardness. His delighted facial expression suggested a jest though he likely did feel pride in his abilities as a warrior as well as the skill of his people.

"This is Gyumenpuhan, you haven't met him the last time though he fought the invader alongside us," Shunabehan extended his hand toward the colorful warrior who just nodded with his fist by his open palm, not too different from how Earthling martial artists from certain locations bowed as well.

"Well, I came here to train and I'd rather get to it. I wouldn't mind one of those fruits you guys use to cool off before breaking something though…" Chayote stretched out, feeling her soaked top sticking to her body. Shunabehan disappeared in his hut, gesturing for his guest to follow while the rest of the warriors returned to their duties.

"You should put this on. It might not be what you're used to wearing but it will help…" Shunabehan pointed at a stack of clothes beside a Maihaku fruit.

"How will wearing more clothes help? I'm already feeling vexed in here which is the exact thing I came here to learn to avoid…" Chayote grumbled, grabbing the fruit and digging her teeth into it through the shell, ignoring the fact that she had to crack it and crumble the hard shell off of the soft and cool insides.

"You're losing more liquids by wearing fewer clothes. Wearing our attire helps to preserve your liquids and prevents you from blacking out fast. Our turbans are made from the shell of the Maihaku fruit, it is second to none in protecting against heat so it will keep your head cool," Shunabehan explained with patience unbefitting someone who lived in such a torrid planet.

"Fine… Just give me something to smash!" Chayote grumbled, slipping the turban on and sliding inside the baggy man-dress that held itself together on a pair of incredibly loose straps. It felt like she'd slide right out if she wasn't aware of this top at all times.

The edges of vision were black, like veins overflowing with corruption the darkness seeped further and further toward the center of the eye, threatening to black everything out while Chayote moved around fueled by instinct and the primal desire to hit something rather than planned and controlled sensory input. Something rock-hard hit her head though it wasn't tough to tell that it caved due to that collision, Chayote blitzed onward, moving behind whatever she was hitting and kicked them in the back. A deafening rumble followed by audible outcries broke the Saiyan out of her battle trance.

"That's incredible, you've knocked out fifteen of our warriors already!" Mekishihan whom Chayote had met during her previous visit to Planet Beiko exclaimed. "It is hard to believe that you are the same person that struggled with the Colossal Sky-Manta…"

"Indeed, though you'd better drink some milk of Maihaku and cool your head off before you pass out…" Shachanabehan whom Chayote met during her current training session said while wiping the blood off of his face and dusting himself off of the dirt he gathered while being manhandled by the rampaging Saiyan.

"We may as well call it quits for today. Chayote is not used to training for prolonged periods of time and she can't manipulate her Ki in a way that cools her off, it seems…" Shunabehan panted, his legs looked wobbly and barely supported his leaning body anymore. The locals called off the training session feeling pitiful for their own bodies as much as they felt merciful for the newbie.

"This is pointless…" Chayote grumbled by the fire. She hated the fact that the planet barely cooled off during the night as well, turning out temperatures that would have been considered tropical extremes on Earth even during the coolest nocturnal periods when the locals assured her she'd feel thankful for all the clothes Shunabehan lent her.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Shunabehan wondered. "Don't tell me that our warriors aren't up to your standards, that is just impossible, especially with you still not being used to this planet's conditions."

"All I'm doing is fighting, it helps to grow a little bit stronger but that's not what I'm looking for. If anything, it makes my problem worse. I feel like I'm about to blackout and explode every time I attack…" Chayote complained to the Beiko warrior while he was chopping up the tail of some tree-chomping mammal that smelled of overcooked grease when Shunabehan exposed the body fat stored up inside the tail to the outside.

"Ah, that's right, your fits of rage you've told me about…" Shunabehan closed his eyes, not losing a speck of his chopping ability and showing himself to be an even more impressive cook than the Saiyan took him to be. "Your frustration is understandable, given how irritable and impatient you are."

"Excuse me?" Chayote raised an eyebrow, having not expected that she'd be slapped in the face with her personality flaws like that.

"Children of Beiko possess the same qualities you value and rely on in battle and wish to be rid of at the same time. They whine, they rage and try to use their natural strength to rampage. You do not learn a technique of Ki manipulation that cools your head off, a cool head manifests a method of Ki control. Right now there is no reason why you shouldn't be able of using Nova Mode," Shunabehan stated with his eyes still closed and his lips in a neutral stretch over his face while his arm movements blurred his limb from his wrist to the tip of his fingers.

"Nova Mode? You mean the whole surrounded in flames when you unleash your Ki in an aura thing? We call it the Hot-Red Mode on Earth…" Chayote relaxed in the chair while waving one of the few sheets of dried out leaves on the table to ventilate herself a bit.

"Call it whatever you will, that method of Ki control is called for when you feel profound anger and pride, the desperate need to complete your goal and utter dismissal of any outcome other than your total domination over the enemy," Shunabehan shrugged after putting the chopping tool beside him and serving the sliced tail beside a pile of the pulp of the Dainucho fruit which served a type of staple food complementing the main dish on Beiko.

"I feel that all the time…" Chayote shrugged. "I've never used that mode once though…"

"That's because you feel a myriad of other things. Those emotions do not consume you, you do not let them do so. You resist, instead of riding them like a wave, you let it wash you away and drag you under. You need to let those feelings fill you to the brink, you need to submit to that aggression," Shunabehan shook his head, his lips arced with the tips looking downward which made him seem like he disapproved of Chayote's complaint.

"Yeah but… That's why I came here, to learn how to not lose control. I can't just rage out and catch ablaze, that's exactly what I'm trying to prevent here," Chayote shrugged. "Can't I just learn the opposite, the Cold-White Mode or whatever you guys call it?"

"You're far too rash to prioritize that method," Shunabehan stopped eating for a second to give Chayote a strict glare.

"I'm not… Rash…" Chayote looked away, embarrassed for the parental-type scolding she was receiving.

"If you weren't, you'd have listened when I told you that you do not become cool-headed by mastering the "Cold-White Mode", it is once you get in control over your emotions and reach that state yourself, let it define you one-hundred percent that you enter the "Cold-White Mode"," Shunabehan got Chayote good with that last one, the Saiyan looked down with a flush of heat pumping through her face. Had it not been for the fact that she was sweating and constantly beaming blood-red from her skin all over, she'd have made that sick burn she took even more apparent.

"Then I'd better take off in the morning. One of the planets out there has the answer to helping me control my emotions…" Chayote looked away after leaning back in her chair like a disobedient child who just didn't want to eat her greens, even though the local food was luscious and nippy, just what she needed at any given point in time on this planet.

"Hmph… You will not become less rash by running away from the struggle. In fact, that's exactly how most define being rash," Shunabehan continued to roast the Saiyan even when planet Beiko didn't appear to employ any methods of heating their food.

"I've come here to learn to get in control of my emotions, stop myself from raging out and losing control, getting my friends into trouble because of my rash decisions. If I cannot do this here, there's no point in staying here any longer…" Chayote stood up, acting like she was denouncing this planet's usefulness as she stared right at Shunabehan. The Saiyan slipped a pair of tail chops into her mouth while the Beiko warrior sulked with his eyes closed even if she wanted to pout and act capriciously.

"Are you saying that there is nothing of use that this planet can teach you? Because to say that is to be too misguided for anyone to hammer that nonsense out of your head. Just because this planet cannot teach you this one thing you're looking for doesn't mean that you have to destroy and rush past everything in your path to that goal. Who knows, maybe our training will serve useful when you would have fallen short while your goal was within your reach?" Shunabehan shrugged, speaking with a lax tone that made it feel like Chayote was as free to go anytime she wanted as she was to come here.

"Tsk…" Chayote clicked her tongue and dragged the chair back, planting her behind back down and stuffing her face full of food. "Whatever the deal with this "your whole body and spirit behind it" stuff… Martial arts training back on Earth was exactly the same…" she grumbled.

"If you don't do something with all of your focus, all of your skill and dedication then there is no point in doing that thing at all. Of course, the principles of finer Ki control would demand identical things to the Ki control principles you've learned on Earth," Shunabehan replied with a calmer and softer tone while eating with small bites and pacing himself to where, Chayote thought, he'd go hungry again long before finishing his share of food.

"Yeah well… Maybe Kakarot knows for sure the kind of person he is, maybe Krillin knows a hundred percent that he's a scaredy-cat who's in over his head with all his body and mind… What if… What if I'm not sure?" Chayote sighed, she's never lost appetite before but she was beginning to. In the end, she didn't choose to reject the Frieza Army, she kept on lying to herself that serving Lord Frieza was what she truly wanted up until the point she blacked out and let the rage seal that path for her forever.

Her rage… She acted just like what she wanted back then when she blacked out on the planet of giant animals and slain those Frieza Army soldiers. Lying was a method of deeper thought, just like becoming a human supernova was a method of more complex Ki control. Ironically enough, she had the possibility to be fully genuine with herself if she just let go though that was exactly what she couldn't allow. There had to be a different method of controlling her emotions and being honest with herself without becoming a mindless shell for her instinct to drive.

"Wait… You said that Hot-Red requires one to feel a surge of power, aggression, and pride, an absolute dismissal of loss as a viable option?" Chayote wondered.

"So you can sometimes listen then…" Shunabehan let the tips of his lips move up a bit.

"Krillin could pull it off, Yamcha too… Holy crap, I never realized those guys could feel those kinds of emotions…" Chayote looked up at the ceiling, having cleaned her wooden bowl of food and waiting for Shunabehan to finish as well.

"It appears your friends are much more emotionally mature than you. Perhaps you should have stayed back on Earth and asked them for help?" Shunabehan brought up the possibility.

"Yeah right… Even if they knew a magic word that just stopped me flipping out instantly, I'd never ask them for that word," Chayote smirked with an energetic grin.

"Such pointless pride, it is difficult to imagine such as yourself struggling with Nova Mode…" Shunabehan continued to maul at Chayote's pride.

Despite not having found an immediate answer to her problems, Chayote lingered on Planet Beiko for a few more weeks, training with the locals every day even when it didn't seem like the training was beneficial to her. The Saiyan tried to see whatever invisible use Shunabehan saw in such training but besides just common fighting practice and the valuable experience of fighting someone from another planet with a wholly different fighting style, Chayote couldn't make it out.

"Please set a course for your next destination…" the robotic voice requested when Chayote planted her bottom on the soft driving seat, having called her ship back from orbiting around Planet Beiko on the day when she felt like she was beginning to feel bored. Much to her surprise, Shunabehan encouraged her to leave and seek her answers when she brought her boredom up with him.

"Planet Sando," Chayote declared, recalling the odd method of Ki manipulation that the locals used in long-range projectiles of sheer water pressure that they performed underwater and the things they could do with seaweed through forming fields of Ki to shape them and lock them into place. Plus, there was always the dread of the challenge lurking in the depths of that planet too.

Even if Sando proved to be a bust as well, at the very least the sleeping dread in the planet's core would prove an entertaining nightmare to explore.


	104. The Faustian Bargain

Chayote stared outside at the passing stars through the thick, tinted glass of the porthole. She's learned a decent deal back at Planet Beiko. Despite that, she didn't trust Shunabehan's suggestion that one must have first learned to control their emotions and unify their inner selves before grasping advanced Ki control. If the two aspects truly were related, then there shouldn't have been a difference from which side Chayote approached it.

If unity with one's emotions and honesty with one's self was what made it possible to achieve remarkable feats of Ki manipulation, then one should have been able to achieve unity and honesty of body and mind from the position of someone with remarkable Ki control.

Planet Sando was a perfect location to further her training. The Sando warriors weren't physically powerful though they could use their Ki to create elemental Ki blasts as well. Chayote had no problem creating elemental Ki blasts, her Jelly Beam managed to combine blazing, shocking, and freezing Ki manipulation alike but creating a Ki blast that was hot or cold still a step behind from letting it embody one's entire being and color one's own aura.

Still, if she was to achieve anything of purpose down in Planet Sando, she needed a few tools. If she landed there as is, she'd just get attacked by the locals and have to fight them off again, she'd get nowhere. Plus, she'd just be staying there temporarily. If she was to train there for real, she needed a mean to control her breath underwater as well as understand the locals.

The door to the space station opened up. It was bold of Chayote to show her face around Frieza Army space, even if it was the most remote reaches of it. It was troublesome that she had no money on herself to acquire all of the things she needed. Still, a space station in the nearest sector to Planet Sando was the most likely place to get the things she needed. Given how she traversed in a different ship, nobody would immediately pin her ship and her identity, and, if she was lucky, she'd get in and out fast enough to avoid that altogether.

"I've got no money so screw with the ship at your own expense…" Chayote pointed her index at a handful of short, impish aliens armed with tools and toolboxes. In sectors uncontrolled by the Frieza Army they would employ shady tactics of fixing the ship without being asked to do so, then haggle for their selfish repairs with confused visitors of the station.

They still might have done so here but without the backup of the authorities and with the risk of screwing over a Frieza Army officer being ever-present, they would have kept those antics back as much as they could help it. It wasn't much but it was something. Chayote could feel wayward stares at her the whole time, how many of them could pin her identity down, and how many just felt confused about seeing a Saiyan remained unclear for now.

Even if somebody on this station did know who she was, they'd be rather unlikely to attack her. While she was known mostly for attacking a pair of Frieza Army soldiers and assisting a Galactic Patrolman against more Frieza Army soldiers, people interested in cashing in whatever measly bounty laid on Chayote's head would have found even the most elementary scouter checks of how much trouble she'd be unsatisfactory. Even when greatly suppressing herself, Chayote looked like too much trouble for a measly bounty she had on her.

"Right, Planet Sando, you'll need a telepathic amplifier to catch the telepathic signals of the locals and a wireless liquid-breathing apparatus. You can have those for five gems," the salesman in Frieza Army armor and a body build that suggested he wasn't much good for anything other than selling things declared after filtering through a small chest of rainbow-gleaming gems. It was the preferred currency anywhere where Frieza Army extended its clutches.

"I'm short on money at the moment. I figured we'd be able to make a deal. I have a ship with far too many unnecessary parts or I can run you an errand. From my experience, the seaweed of Planet Sando is great for a multitude of tasks. I can scoop it up for you by boxes." Chayote suggested, wincing and hoping her best that it would work.

"Sorry, if you want, you can sell those parts of yours off in the market and bring me the gems later. I'm not going to take your word they're worth selling on my vendor, even if they might be all that and more. Don't even get me started on that moss thing. Ajisa moss, Sandoan seaweed, it's all fancy for those garage fix-em-upper types. People don't even bother visiting Sando all that much except for scientific purposes and studies. If you're looking to sell that off to someone, go sell it to some intern of Frieza Space University the Frieza Institute of Space Science, or something…" the vendor shrugged.

Chayote clicked her tongue and walked off, irritated. Doing her best to not acknowledge the vendor as his utter indifference to making any sort of deal, as reasonable as it would have seemed if their roles were reversed, made Chayote's blood pressure rise and blowing up the station was the last thing she ever wanted. The scouters of a few nearby soldiers blew up, prompting them to stumble back in shock and awe, Chayote gifted them with the parting gift of ongoing nightmares for two weeks straight when she gave them a moody glare but before she could raise too much woe, she stormed off.

The little, dirt-handed shit-stains back at the garage were helping themselves to Chayote's food supplies when she came back. Something pulsed in her forehead, despite being the closest to open space in a chilly hangar, Chayote felt not a hint of cold as her blood was about to boil. Everything whited out for just a second and the next thing she knew, she held a poor and helpless little space-goblin squirming in her grip as her fist was winded up to blow its head off.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but I've heard you weren't able to find what you were looking for in the station. Perhaps I might be able to finance your venture in exchange for being able to reach a common understanding with each other?" Chayote tossed the little, squirming dwarf aside. The pathetic alien just caressed his broken teeth with its sharp fingers as they had shattered and broken off when it tried biting its way out of Chayote's deadly squeeze.

The man that had spoken up to her was a middle-aged weakling. He did consider himself important enough to don a cloak and a hood and Chayote could notice black eyes and a thick, black eyebrow line underneath, making this man look eerily similar to a Saiyan. Though until a tail could be seen, that much was just an educated guess for now. No Saiyan would have tried bartering for something they could have taken away with the added bonus of fighting another Saiyan for sure, that alone took a decent chunk of probability away.

"You're a Saiyan?" Chayote asked directly, letting her own tail slip out from her baggy clothes.

"Guilty as charged…" the man removed his cloak, revealing short and spiky, black hair and a thick mustache on his face. The man wore an armor different from the standard Frieza Army issue and it appeared to come packed with a white cape that he hid underneath previously. "Though I am not as violent nor as powerful as you'd expect a Saiyan to be. You could call me low-class, though I myself consider myself a Saiyan whose talents are simply in a wholly different field of science."

"I'm Chayote, I am traveling to Planet Sando and I need a functional telepathic signal amplifier and a wireless liquid-breathing apparatus. Can you provide me with those?" Chayote wondered, if this man was indeed who he claimed to be, he might have served useful by inventing those objects, even under threat of violence, if need be.

"I… I cannot, I must say that I don't much care on building them for you either, I have a project of my own in mind as well which demands the entirety of my attention. My name is Paragus, perhaps you have heard of me?" Paragus appeared entirely too confident on whatever non-existent reputation he had, for a scientist it was not a smart thing to rely on when he had just seen the short-fuse of the Saiyan he was talking to.

"I only care about those gadgets I need and, the potential of a good fight, if you're indeed a Saiyan. You're lucky I'm trying to restrain myself from my rampages. If I wasn't – I'd have killed you for wasting my time alone…" Chayote turned around and took a firm step forward, frightening the aliens surrounding her ship. Even right now, after paling from their usual color of blood-red into a much healthier shade of pink, the hangar-dwellers looted Chayote's spaceship for the formal repairs they've forced onto her. Even if there was the smallest chance for running off with some free loot, even the chance of absolute, violent death did not seem like a deterrent to these folks.

"I… I apologize if I did not complete voicing my intentions. You see, I might not be able to provide you with the gadgets you desire, though I can give you the handful of gems needed, and more. If we can simply reach an understanding here…" Paragus explained himself, further pushing his boundaries but then saving his well-being by making Chayote interested.

"Really?" Chayote turned back. "What sort of understanding? What is it exactly that you need from me? An errand?"

"Of sorts… Though all I would ask of you is that you let me perform a few tests on you, check your blood-type and take an absolutely immaterial sample of your tissue, if all is well. I'll compensate for your time, either way, whether your blood fits me or not," Paragus said, approaching closer to the slightly taller Saiyan, sensing her interest and the fact that the potential of getting pricked by a few needles and some of her tissue cut up didn't completely scare her off.

"Tell me why you need all that stuff, then I'll think about it. For all I know you might drug me and deliver me to the Frieza Army, or something…" Chayote placed her hands on her hips. She wanted to go for it but something in her gut alerted that this might have been the absolute worst idea ever.

"Well… Perhaps we could discuss this on your ship. I arrived onto this station in my pod and my laboratory is all the way back in Planet Shamo so, if you were to be interested, it would be more convenient if the tests were performed in an environment more comfortable to you," Paragus stepped closer to Chayote and pointed at her spaceship, requesting permission to board it alongside her.

He was even nice enough to help Chayote in chasing off and kicking out, when necessary, all the hangar inhabitants looting her food and supplies. He seemed somewhat satisfied by the formal medical facilities as well, declaring them satisfactory for their deal albeit somewhat primitive.

"It might make the extraction of the necessary tissue more painful, seeing how rudimentary the tech this laboratory is, though it should be capable of performing all the tests I need," Paragus nodded in approval after a brief examination of the tools found inside. "I can only wonder what planet all of this is from, though if it's a secret, I'll understand and abandon the matter…"

"Just spill the beans already…" Chayote grumbled. She didn't like how nice and accommodating this Paragus guy was being. If that was even his actual name. He sure sounded a lot like a devil one signed off one's soul to.

"Very well, the matter of the source of this vessel's technology is irrelevant anyway," Paragus shrugged, "As I've said before, my name is Paragus, though it appears this name does not mean much to you. The reason why it should is because of a coup attempt at Planet Vegeta which I was involved in. This has been the case of taking the throne for thousands of years on Planet Vegeta – the stronger party simply takes the throne by force though I was unfortunately defeated. King Vegeta relied on Frieza's help as well to repel my rebellion…"

For someone who's been foiled and therefore now a fugitive wanted even more than Chayote was, without a doubt, this man seemed remarkably calm about the whole thing. Almost like he was reading off something from a book or synopsis of some movie, or recounting something someone else has told him.

"You've escaped? That's almost a little bit amazing…" Chayote shrugged, due to her suspicions she still couldn't invest too many chips into the story.

"We did not escape. Me and my son, Broly, were grievously injured and abandoned to die. Death should have claimed us in a matter of days of grueling agony though my son, Broly, he's very powerful. He turned out to be far sturdier than a child should have been…" Paragus closed his eyes with a stoic expression.

"You've tried to overtake King Vegeta with the help of a child? That doesn't sound very smart for a scientist…" Chayote scratched her head.

"We had no choice. Baby Broly was too powerful, even as a baby his power level was far beyond prince Vegeta's. The King would have had him killed or sent him off to a mission he had no hopes of succeeding in, as a scientist, I had the foresight to take destiny into my own hands," Paragus smirked while lifting his palms up, as if he attempted to hold a figurative version of Planet Vegeta in between them.

"Okay… So… You want my help overthrowing King Vegeta or something? That doesn't sound like something we've agreed on…" Chayote shook her head, refusing that idea from the get-go. "Don't care how powerful your toddler is."

"No, you do not understand, my Broly has been in suspended animation back on Planet Shamo the whole time. We've managed to establish some remarkable medical facilities down on Planet Shamo with state of the art cloning and prosthesis technology. It's just what we need to cure my son, I just need a few samples of someone with a similar genetic make-up to him, the same blood-type, if you will, though the specifics go a bit deeper than that…" it was this part that made Paragus show the most emotion, pride, glee, malice in foreseeing the future destruction of those that spat him.

If he did end up blowing Planet Vegeta up and then dealing with Lord Frieza, it would deal with most of Chayote's problems, her fears for the future, it would also change the vision Goku had in Korin Tower of him facing off against his father alongside Chayote. If there was a chance that Saiyans would never reach Earth, it was a chance worth exploring.

"So you think I'm it, huh?" Chayote crossed her arms over her chest.

"I cannot be sure but… When I saw your… Lack of impulse control, the rage that is just pure, textbook Saiyan physiology. Most Saiyans think they're violence incarnate but, like their backstabbing King, they're mischievous, deviant, they talk a lot about pride and the thrill of the battle but they'll be the first to backstab you when your back is turned and save themselves the trouble of fighting you. You… You remind me the most of my son Broly," Paragus explained. "Plus, you are just very conveniently not affiliated with the Frieza Army and running from it, just like me so there's nothing lost in just giving it a shot."

"Fine…" Chayote clicked her tongue and extended her wrist. "Gut away, doc…"

"Fascinating… Simply fascinating!" Paragus appeared overjoyed by what he was looking at through the microscope even if a moment ago he declared such a device "painfully basic to work with".

"So am I a fit?" Chayote scratched her abdomen where that mustached bastard had driven his scalpel in, still feeling some aching in her joints too from when Paragus took some bone marrow samples. It was tough to tell why he needed that, Broly's injuries must have been far worse than Chayote imagined. Then again, even if it wasn't just a tiny boo-boo, Paragus must have taken a sample of every possible tissue he could, as if everything of Broly's had been reduced to ash to some degree.

"Oh, you're perfect! I had thought that I would need to find a close second to synthesize the C-Type S-Cells that I am looking for but… From what I can tell, you already possess them naturally! This is just brilliant, I could shower you with gems if you went down to Planet Shamo and I could work on you extensively!" Paragus couldn't stop giggling like a little child, hoarding all of his precious tubes and samples.

"Yeah… Right…" Chayote squinted and tossed him a case of capsules. "Try this, it's a piece of Earthling technology called "capsules", you can put your samples all in one place and not lose them. As if I'm ever letting you drill my spine again, you creep!"

"It is a pity though I cannot in my right mind leave disappointed. You've just proven to be a golden goose that laid an egg containing a time skip of fifty years of research. I had never for the life of me dreamed to be able to bring my son, Broly, back within my physical prime and now… I might be done with it in a matter of years…" Paragus appeared to be a natural of working with the capsules. He placed all of his priceless treasure inside of them and then lobbed a decent chunk of gems at Chayote.

"Those are natural, they're mined and not issued…" Chayote examined the sash.

"That is of no concern, the entire Frieza Army space will accept them with open arms. To some degree, they even appear more visually appealing than their counterparts issued by the Frieza Space Bank," Paragus cleared his throat.

"That's fine, just observing…" Chayote shrugged, feeling a bit blue about the prospect of having to go back into that blasted station to pick up the gadgets she needed again.

"Very well, ma'am, in that case, I wish you the best of luck on Planet Sando, with whatever it is your future ventures are. You have done me a tremendous favor, I can only hope that one day both me and Broly could thank you for it in person," Paragus nodded and slipped his hood back on.

Chayote fell down on her back and stretched out her arms and weary legs, she had a decent chunk of her blood drained out of her and got a bunch of slight incisions all over her body. The worst part was – it was unlikely that her Zenkai would register this as a notable injury though it sure felt as bothersome as the day after a nice battle. She should just close her eyes and snooze for a bit, just until she regains her strength to pick up the tech she needs.

Then onwards to Planet Sando, at last!

* * *

_**Author's Note: Okay, so I know that the backstory Paragus provided doesn't fit EITHER of the Broly movies, and there's a very good reason for that, though that reason won't become relevant for a long time from now. For now, I would just like to avoid a barrage of "That's not how the Broly movies went, learn a thing or two about Dragon Ball, at least read the DB Wiki, filthy casual!" comments by prefacing this and, if possible, calming you down that I am not being wrong out of ignorance, I am being wrong on purpose so that I can be right'er later :D**_


	105. The Shadow Under Sando

"Now entering: Planet Sando…" the ship's interface alerted its sole passenger waking her up from her meditation training. The vessel had gotten good at its arcing trajectory that placed tremendous stress on certain areas of the ship and didn't seem practical though it was quite comfortable for not crashing into the planet's surface and having the spaceship usable for traveling once it had arrived.

It took a few focused breaths to filter out the raging storms up above, the howls of the rabid whirlwinds and the whips of thunder so intense that they've have consumed the whole spaceship if Chayote was unlucky enough to get hit by it. The Saiyan slipped on the breathing apparatus that came on as a cover of her lower face, connected to a perpetual oxygen source on the back that was recycled through a pair of tubes that extended past her lower face like gill-marks.

The amplifier seemed like a fickle device, it went around her temple, attached to one's ears, and appeared similar to a hearing aid except for the fact that it was a lot spikier and much thinner. There were a lot of bogus idiots back on Earth that claimed to be able to sense whatever on Earth they wanted to sense with thin metal rods just like these ones though Chayote felt confident that they'd work. Even up where she was she was getting static which didn't feud with what her Ki sensing prowess was telling her.

The Saiyan plunged down and submerged a few hundred meters, driving herself through the planet-wide ocean like a drill to the abyss. Her sensory served her just fine down there so there was no need to see anything and if she did need to take a gander at something, Chayote could have always manifested some natural light from her aura or by forming a Ki blast.

The amplifier rods buzzed like crazy. A pressure blast his Chayote dead-on, freezing her in her tracks and flinching her for just a second. The following barrage of pressure blasts bounced off of a Kiai wall that Chayote had erected around her. She was capable of telepathy from her time down on Earth so if these creatures did interact telepathically, she should have been able to pick something up, though their frequencies must have been different from those of a skilled Ki user which was why Chayote needed the amplifier in the first place.

"Foreigner, your efforts are in vain!"

"Alien, you should have never disembarked to this establishment!"

"Interloper, your lowly self is staking on ventures that are not a subject of your supervision!"

The Sandoans didn't strike Chayote as diverse race, despite their odd eloquence, though they did seem to be somewhat intelligent to be able to plan out and synchronize their attacks like this as well as craft some of the most well-spoken warnings to leave their home turf alone. The Saiyan tried to respond, she evaded a few hi-speed diving tackles and closed her eyes to soothe her attackers.

"I'm not looking to cause harm. I've come here to train," Chayote sent out an amplified telepathic signal. It felt a bit weird having the tingling sensation of the humming amplifier rods responding to her own intense thoughts in a way that made the device vibrate even under the immense abyssal pressure down there.

"Train? We are of the substantial and you are of the impuissant!"

"Train? What is it that one of superlative sophistication and potentiality can inculcate a primordial whelp such as yourself?"

"Train? The only education that the domicile of the deep can illuminate for you is that of your ruination!"

Something felt off, there was no way these guys could have worked as a functional society. It felt like all of them were dazed or tipsy or something. They all spoke at once, not only that, they all raised and lowered their power levels at once, almost as if they worked under some sort of hive mind.

Chayote looked down at a point hundreds of thousands of miles below her. The place where she could feel the immense power level from during her first visit, the place she had shut off her consciousness from earlier so that the power level stopped frightening her and helped her focus on the task at hand, which, at the time, was to survive the onslaught of the locals.

"Disappear!"

"Withdraw now!"

"Elope yourself and misrecollect this quarter forevermore!"

"Oh, I see how it is now…" Chayote smirked, never dropping her attention from the point in the deep she couldn't see even if she doubled the depth she was in right now. "You're controlling them like your drones, aren't you? I don't even care, honestly, I just want to learn some of your planets tricks. You see, I sometimes get pretty mad and…"

Whatever the deep entity residing in the core of Planet Sando was about, it did not include the virtue of patience. It only made Chayote feel a tad better about herself, given that it was something she herself still failed to learn. The Sandoans flooded her like bees, surrounding her in a moshpit and smacking at her, biting and trying to ravage her flesh with their jaws.

No army fought like this, they weren't a good team, they weren't an oiled fighting machine, all of the Sandoans quite literally fought as one being. The vanguard rushed her, wrapped around her, and used their vast tails as blocks for her movement, mere obstacles that could have flattened boulders. Others yet utilized the openings that the vanguard left them to dig their chompers into Chayote's flesh, bite and rip, race away when the flesh didn't tear. The furthest ones sent pressure waves, intensifying the pressure of the oceans around Chayote thousandfold. It was a power of gravity that could have held an entire planet together.

They were all so weak yet so adamant about making a difference, for all the mean things they called Chayote, they were the real obstacles, the real interlopers between her dealing with her temper issues and having a safe and peaceful life on Earth. They were the true intruders and they were the ones that were pissing Chayote off by staying resolute about standing in her way.

Snaps followed by bursts of rising bubbles distracted Chayote, she noticed a whole platoon of Sandoans losing their armored scales that covered them and leaving stringy bits of white flesh exposed in the open – there was some sweltering heat coming off of Chayote in her pride over her enemy, her anger and desire to utterly dominate it and bend it, break it so that it stayed out of her way. Yet none of the brainwashed Sandoans appeared to care too much, all they did was continue on their offensive, brushing off their own boiling flesh until they began surfacing belly-up by the dozens.

"You need them, don't you!?" Chayote roared out, letting the heat out, letting it all pulse from her until she sunk the entire fragment of the planet-wide ocean in rabid bubbles of heat looking for the quickest escape, potent enough to wash the assailants off of her with its rush toward the surface. By the time that they returned to seek for their interloper, Chayote was already gone.

It was impossible to tell day from night down in the deep. Chayote didn't even dream about surfacing to her spaceship for rest. Every time she needed food, she emerged from the safety of the complex and abandoned seaweed structures and submitted herself to the hive assault of the Sandoans, fighting them off and escaping with a few corpses to survive from. She kept moving the location of her spaceship around the planet's surface so that the guy deep down below couldn't track its location. Unlike Chayote and the Sandoans, it was entirely mechanical meaning that it had no mind to bend to its will or even track.

From what Chayote could take, the guy in the deep was aware of everything that his drones were aware of. She at least assumed that it was a him, whenever she heard the telepathic warnings and demands for her "accelerated bereavement", it sounded more masculine than feminine, though it sounded pissed off and malicious more than anything else.

She came to enjoy the training from the harsh and dark survival conditions that she got. She could observe the Sandoans making their pressure waves though, from what they felt like when they made it, they couldn't have been anything fancier than mere telekinesis combined with the ordinary offensive Kiai blast. While she lacked the talent for the first, she could do the second without much issue already. The novelty of being chased around a hive mind of fish people was beginning to wear on Chayote though. She wasn't quite sure how many days had passed when that became the case.

The weirdest part was that all of this time she's had not a single complex thought, her routine of the unwelcome stay on Planet Sando had become a labor of instinct alone. At times Chayote snapped back to reality, having realized that she had spent entire hours just surviving, hiding, staring at blank points in the abyssal darkness and resting without any bodily or spiritual input whatsoever, even fighting off the drones. At this point, she had outrun them so many times, used the bubble shuffle of the Hot-Red Mode so many times, that it had become a triviality.

Just how much time had she wasted on this useless labor?

A supermassive, golden expansion of aura swallowed up what might have been conceived as a building by whoever had sculpted it from seaweed and minerals. The golden orb took a deep plunge though its radiance did not escape the attention of the drones that served a deeper master. Despite their persistence, the Sandoan drones could not touch the Saiyan woman inside the golden nova of Ki, taking an infuriated plunge to the planet's master until she let her radiance fizzle out and stay as a bubble of Ki around her to shield her from the immense gravitational press from within the deepest abyss of Planet Sando.

"Even a primordial guppy, a joke seeded by evolution's cruel whims knows not to gaze upon the form of the Deep One," the telepathic signal was so mighty that Chayote could hear it whispering without any need for telepathic soaking of the signals.

"You're pretty puny though. I needed a receiver to hear your signals, it's only because those lackeys of your are so dim-witted that you're able to have them dance for you anyway…" Chayote taunted the abyssal beast.

"Offense at the expense of briny upbringer!? Inconceivable! My supreme transcendence shall reduce your interloping worthlessness to nihility!" the whispers were beginning to annoy Chayote, she needed no gadget to tell that her blood pressure was beginning to rise.

"I can sense your power level, you're stronger than me but not by that much. Plus, I've still got tricks to increase my power level further, Hot-Red Mode, this newest technique that I've come up with. You're nothing more than a squid playing a core of a planet. I might not be able to beat you, what with all of your fancy telepathy and such, but I can make sure you've got no planet around you to act high and mighty in," Chayote crossed her arms over her chest. She then extended them sideways, demonstrating her newly developed technique – the sphere of protective Ki that approached the size of a planetoid and exposed the mixture of chitin and steel, flesh and cybernetic implants, and an immeasurable number of eyes littered across a body to massive for Chayote to comprehend. She was not scared to look at it, she didn't care much if she was just staring at the creature's head or its one limb or whatever, if it wanted so bad to identify as a planet – she felt damn sure of the fact she could obliterate said planet.

"Bide your time and linger on your destructive tendencies, underdeveloped ignoramus. It took me more time than what your encephalon can wrap around to ensure this method of existence and beneficial servitude. It is a complex and fruitless undertaking to explain the difficulty in the development of a species to a simpleton that's a mere cog in their own category, you've stated your ambition to be guidance? Cultivation of your competence?"

"So… You've basically developed the Sandoans then?" Chayote pressed her finger to her lips. "I thought they were just really stupid and you took over them like a space-emperor or something. I've had a mean streak of running into a bunch of those…"

"My plain of existence is the space-time itself. I can ordinate the fundamental forces to make, eradicate, and transform matter. I've come to enjoy this domicile of water and the drones in my control, serving my needs…"

Chayote felt a potent telekinetic wrap around her though she had spent more than enough time training with Chiaotzu to know the theoretical part of breaking out of telekinetic binds so, while the strength was many times higher than that of the ghoulish Earthling, the matter was fundamentally the same.

"We occur to be obstacles to each other, it seems… You do seem legitimate in your capability to expunge my facility of habitation, state the terms of your parlay, I might just accommodate them for symbiotic coexistence for the duration of your unfortunate stopover." The Deep One seemed quite displeased by his failure to break or subjugate Chayote.

"Hmmm… I wonder what those drones of yours are like when you let go of them, I mean they have to have a mind of their own for you to control it…" Chayote pondered.

"Your proposition is that I emancipate a spattering of my dependents for your amusement? I am a witness of the phenomenon that while the scales of our existence could not be more divergent, we partake in analogous merrymakings," the Deep One spoke with a blunt tone, for the first time lacking the irritation that Chayote usually brought about.

"Ugh… You're making my head hurt and it's not from the damned telepathy. It would be a healthy change to train with something that doesn't feel like it's their duty to speak pretentiously all the time. Plus, I did remove the Ultimate Dragon Ball from your planet back then, it would have invited a whole bunch of unwanted attention from all sorts of bad guys, you know. You kind of owe me for that one too…" Chayote waggled her finger in front of the Deep One.

"I am not certain that you apprehend the denotation of the morpheme of "pretentious" since for one to possess the quality of pretention, they must not be endowed by the property they articulate of. But, alas, I will accommodate you in Planet Sando by liberating a few grovels to engross and gladden you with their elementariness," the Deep One's immeasurable number of skyscraper-wide eyes gleamed in the dark, lighting up the distance vaster than Chayote's own gazers could reach.

"Thanks, space-squid, you're a real treat!" Chayote gestured with her fingers by her temple before rocketing up towards the surface to meet the liberated group of Sandoans.

"Alien…" the thought lit up on the amplifier albeit very faintly. For a second Chayote feared betrayal from the side of the sleeping leviathan which would have forced her to plunge back down and kick its ass as well as she could, though there was a self-evident simplicity now to the way that the fish-people of Sando spoke now.

"Training?" another one asked. It was a welcome change of pace to not have to deal with the grandiloquence and dryness of the supermassive space-squid in the core of the planet, so massive that it managed to use its own gravitational field to keep the water it manifested in place.

"Sure thing…" Chayote smirked and took an underwater fighting stance. Training so far deep must have tempered her body as every hit she threw came out a dozen times slower and every moment felt like the water itself was punching at her from all directions at once. Plus, if the cosmic fish-man was capable of manifesting everything that Planet Sando was to keep it in the globular shape of a planet, it must have been able to manifest aquatic Ki.

One thing polished the immature stone that was Chayote's thoughts now – water seemed like pretty much the next thing to serenity. If she studied and observed the space-calamari long enough, she was certain to pick up its tricks of the trade, or, at least, understand the way in which it thought. If she understood the emotions necessary for the Tranquil-Blue Mode, or whatever the Earthlings would come to call it once they saw it, she'd calm down for once and be able to go back to Earth.

It was the most peculiar thing to see the Sandoans move. They were beings created by someone else, guided by their will and now set free yet they lacked even the fundamental self-awareness to recognize how peculiar their existence was. They were free yet they still chose to think about absolutely nothing. In that nothingness though, there was brilliant freedom of thought. Without the guidance of the Deep One, the Sandoans were green in the art of martial arts, though they would learn in time. The best part was – Chayote could surface for good now, eat and sleep back in her vessel without worrying about the Deep One hunting her.

Seeing the momentous improvement that the empty minds displayed by soaking up Chayote's martial arts upon first sight, like sponges, staring at awe at the liberated minds of the Sandoans and how they managed to move without a thought in their mind, the Saiyan realized that she might just like spending some time down here. Ironically enough, Planet Sando, which was nothing but seaweed and limitless oceans, proved to have the most valuable things to keep Chayote down there for a long time to come…


	106. An Abrupt End To a Seven-Year Vacation

Chayote brushed her hand over her hair. By that point she had spent a couple of years traveling in space. She's only had a couple of meaningful stops: Beiko and Sando and while both planets gave her a lot of useful work on her fighting style and martial arts, none of them served to further her goal at all. After learning a bit of how turning Ki into water worked and the emotional backing behind it from the Deep One of Planet Sando, Chayote thought she'd have an easier time restraining her fury but… Whenever her blood pressure came up, she just lost control and that was that.

Shunabehan was right, ultimately, it didn't matter if she learned how to think, feel and act to shape Ki into water or ice, unless she grapples with her emotions, whenever she gets mad, it will merely make it impossible to enter that state mentally. The thought of applying those same principles to quell the fury was a grand one but a foolish one as well.

She also was becoming a lot better in shaping that golden rush attack at will. She wanted to practice it against some planetoids in her way, some meaningless, uninhabited rocks but then she recalled that the universe was already well past its reduced to rubble planets quota. The last thing she wanted was for the whole universe to get blinked out while she practiced how to crash and slam into people and things while enveloping herself in Ki.

There have been numerous meaningless stops in the way. Most of them qualified as glorified resupply stops as there was almost no meaningful time being spent wherever she stayed. All that boredom forced Chayote to enter the Frieza Army space, thinking that there must have been a reason why nobody wielding a blaster and a scouter invaded any of these planets and started pointing their barrels in every direction. She was well within the belly of the beast now. At least she had plenty of spares of the gear…

It might have been for the better if she didn't blow up any planets just for practice, Frieza might have noticed that a few of the rocky lumps in his chest might have gone missing and intensified patrolling in the area.

A particular planet fifty lightyears away from Frieza Planet 79 caught Chayote's attention. It was brimming with electromagnetic activity though her scans of the place provided no data on life signatures. It might have been an empty dump filled with factories and generators. One of those abandoned border worlds that served as an industrial dump. A space where all the inhabitants had either been forcefully evacuated to other planets or the afterlife so that the Frieza Army could drain the planet's resources and run it into disarray.

Chayote could have used an empty space like that. Moreover, it was intriguing to see an abandoned industrial dump so close to an important beacon of Frieza Army's rule like Frieza Planet 79. The emperor himself commonly spent time in that planet as his throne room of choice and here it was – a dump not even a hundred lightyears away, practically within reachable distance of the tyrant and the rumors used to be that Frieza was quite the aesthetic in most things he practiced.

It was this self-challenging enigma that prompted Chayote to land and have a better look inside. Something that Chayote did not expect to see at all was that the planet was nothing but skyscrapers reaching well into the atmosphere, complex monorail systems and knots of magnetic rails. If all the inhabitants were gone, how come the whole place still had something as meaningless as rail systems?

The Saiyan dragged her hand across the screen in front, trying to measure the distance she still had to land to reach the bottom though for the life of her she couldn't. The distance went down and down and further down, nothing but erect skyscrapers and gas, the only semblance of meaningful platitude in the place where any potential inhabitants might have gone out to draw breath was the layers upon layers of magnetic rails.

Chayote's spaceship landed atop one of the shorter skyscrapers. The Saiyan jumped out and landed on one of the monorails, looking around while scratching her head in confusion as to where everybody could have gone off to. This planet appeared to be very much brimming with life. Advertisements, music, various entertainment attractions plastered all over the screen yet not a single soul left to enjoy it all. None of this planet's electromagnetic activity was due to industrial factories or fuel-burning. There didn't seem a single trace of any smog except these biological gasses that layered around and hid the various floors of the complex rail labyrinths.

A mechanical screech made Chayote turn around, it was far too late for something metallic hit her and rolled across the railway, then fumbled over it and shot downward and through the thick, green gas onto the railway on the lower level where Chayote saw a handful more of those mechanical vehicles crashing and flipping over. She jumped after it.

It appeared that the inhabitants of this planet were entirely mechanical in nature, they were the vehicles themselves, in a way, as they had a sharp helmet with a visor of tinted glass of varied colors, armor plating all over them with no arms, just wings spread out and angled as demanded by the possessor of the armor. The lower part of the living vehicle was all a flat pair of interconnected loops that had a couple of mineral orbs inside them with intense magnetic activity. So intense, in fact, that just their presence inside the mechanical gaps where the vehicle's legs or their wheels would have been forced the magnetic orbs to jolt off electromagnetic discharges that might have energized the whole thing.

"What a disaster!" a cybernetic pitch of the universal language spoken inside the Frieza Army space reached Chayote's ears, she looked at the nearest distressed mech in confusion.

"You guys were going pretty fast. I couldn't see you move until you stop, neither could my spaceship scan your life signatures… That's amazing, have you guys tried martial arts?" Chayote wondered out loud, becoming the focus of these aliens' fury.

"You! Off-worlder, what have you done!? Look at these suits, none of them will be able to work!" another mechanized suit postured over Chayote, directing its wings like blades at her at an attempt to keep the odd, fleshy alien that landed on their planet and disrupted their business like that, out of the blue, away from their dealings.

"Suits?" Chayote scratched her head, before seeing one of the totaled mechs open up and a wormy sack slither away from it, coiling over itself and whining in a loud and squeaky pitch. "Oh… I see… Those are exoskeletons…"

"Of course they are! You nincompoop!" another exoskeleton rolled over Chayote on the front, it was only then that the Saiyan noted the magnetic push that the suits employed and the smooth motion in which these exoskeletons moved in. It was a mechanical marvel of efficient movement. "Did you think that anything could be born this way!? Just wait until Governor Bonyu hears about this, the economic implications of this crash are simply staggering!"

"Wait, you mean to tell me you guys haven't had a single crash ever?" Chayote scratched her head.

"Of course not, are you some sort of an imbecile, or something? The society of Frieza Planet 79 prides itself on perfection and efficiency. Just look at all these poor souls that won't be able to go to work today! You've stigmatized them for life! You've made them good for nothing wastes of space, you may as well kill them now, Saiyan!"

"Now… Wait just a second, that sounds a bit harsh…" Chayote rubbed the back of her head, beginning to feel a bit guilty even though she didn't really know what she was doing as she was unable to see or track any movement while landing on the railway. Even now, the only reason she was able to see anything of the exoskeletons whizzing past her was because the local authorities closed down the road behind her and opened up interconnected detours that connected with other railway layers on the system.

"It absolutely is a big deal!" a more feminine and squeaky voice almost deafened Chayote as it rose above her and yelled out at her from that elevated position.

"Look, guys, I think this speed you guys got going is pretty rad. I'm willing to work for all of those guys and repay whatever debt I've incurred if you teach me about it," Chayote offered. "I'm pretty fast myself so I won't need any exoskeletons or whatever. Though if you do tell Bonyu, she'll probably kick my ass and get us all into trouble with Frieza, she is a member of the Ginyu Force, you know…"

"Governess Bonyu is no longer working with the Ginyu Force. Her interests are entirely focused on the technological improvement and benefit to Lord Frieza's empire. Though your offer does sound amusing. If Lord Frieza or Governess Bonyu found out about this unthinkable delay and the economic crisis that is inevitable due to it, he'd freak out and blow up our planet for sure. Very well, we shall teach you a thing or two about our discoveries in the field of rapid movement. Are you sure that you're not a lazy buffoon like most off-worlders and can keep up with the pace and expectations we will be placing on you?"

* * *

"Attention, attention! Fuel supplies limited!" a vicious yell made Chayote jump up. Just the moment when she thought she could get just a sprinkle of some shut-eye, this accursed harpy had to open up its high-pitched speakers and blare at her at full volume.

Did she not deserve at least that much for having spent three whole years breaking her back every morning, rushing to eleven different jobs all while being reprimanded by those magnetic dumbasses of Frieza Planet 79 about how much of a useless waste of an outdated exoskeleton carapace she was. It must have been some sort of a meaningful insult on their planet though Chayote couldn't really understand its point.

She did hate it all the same, given how often everybody threw it at her. Even when bashing her brains against the wall, those suited worms kept coming up with bigger numbers for possible jobs she could have been doing, each one feeling proud of one-upping the last number of optimal number of jobs that Chayote could have been doing. She was supposed to work for twenty-seven people though that would have had her do a grand total of 378 jobs, which would have been a bit steep even for the society of Frieza Planet 79.

The number of jobs a respectable member of community must have had depended on who was speaking on the propaganda videos that nobody could hear anyway since they were too busy rushing to their jobs. All that Chayote knew was that most people were outraged to know she didn't have at least fourteen jobs, which was, apparently, how many jobs were acceptable to a newborn toddler in Frieza Planet 79 to have before they were done dissolving their first pacifier in bodily fluids in the cockpit of their first exoskeleton.

After all this, Chayote deserved just a triplet of z's and yet… The vessel felt obliged to inform her that her fuel supplies were running dry. The worst part was that Chayote was well aware of how rational that was – the spaceship just kept on floating in the atmosphere in a calm orbit around Frieza Planet 79 until Chayote was done with the planet. Of course it would be low on fuel.

"What the nearest space station?" Chayote yawned.

"Thirteen lightyears away. Current fuel supplies will not be enough for the journey, set the destination anyway?"

"Please don't. What's the nearest planet we can refuel at?" Chayote growled in half-snooze mode.

"Planet Babari is the nearest planet to your current location. It does not appear to possess any refueling stations at all though it does possess a vast number of untapped natural minerals and gases that can be converted to fuel," the ship's AI replied.

"Alright, whatever, let's head down there… I guess those Babarians aren't all too interested in working their planet for what it has. All the better for us…" Chayote closed her eyes and stretched her legs.

A violent shake woke Chayote up from her sleep, irritated and still a bit dizzy, the Saiyan jumped up on her feet and looked around, confronting the obnoxious danger alarms and the irritating red gleam filling the interior. She approached the control panel of the ship and opened it up to see what the ship was so urgent to warn her about that couldn't have waited until she was done getting some due rest.

"Warning! Physical contact! Warning! Physical contact!" the ship kept playing the same tune of a broken record.

"What is the damage to the ship?" Chayote asked.

"No significant damage. Warning! Physical contact! Do you wish to ignore the warnings unless imminent damage to the ship is inflicted?" the ship went on and on.

"Why wasn't that always the case!?" Chayote groaned and looked at a small group of bipedal dinosaur-like creatures smashing the ship with fists, rocks and sticks that were as large as an entire tree. She pressed a button on the control panel and opened up a compartment at the side, removing a working scouter and put it on.

The aggravating bashing and thudding only grew more disturbing the closer Chayote went on to the hatch. When the ship opened up, Chayote charged out and dispatched of the small group of Babarians with a combo of swift strikes and kicks, still feeling a bit stiff in her muscles due to the non-stop, grueling physical labor she had to do on Frieza Planet No. 79.

The Babarians growled and writhed on the ground, Chayote examined all of them with her scouter active. She could sense from their Ki signatures that they were not an immediate threat to her though she would have liked to scan these creatures as well. Bulma and Dr. Brief would have liked as much data recorded in these things as possible and the microchips inside these things could have been placed in a wide variety of other communication technology like Earth's computers.

Planet Babari was a lush, beautiful and mountainous world. A natural paradise that was just as untapped by technology as the ship presumed it would be. It was too bad that it was filled to the brim with these raging savages though. Their power levels were nothing special, though they would have posed a challenge to the absolute lowest-ranking grunts of the Frieza Army with the few that Chayote managed to scan reading up to the power levels ranging from a 1000 all the way up to 3800.

Seeing the savage nature of the locals and the raw strength they possessed, Chayote could somewhat understand as to why the planet remained pretty much untouched even when it was inside Frieza Army space, albeit the farther off, north-eastern regions of it. Chayote pressed the red button on her scouter, sensing more and more Ki signatures incoming as the ruckus from the beatdown that the local Babarians inflicted on her vessel attracted some attention.

"Hey, listen up, you savages! You've busted up my ship and you're gonna have to work off that debt, because, apparently, that's how we do things here in Frieza Army space!" Chayote yelled out at the fallen Babarians before looking up at the rushing brutes from up ahead.

She was a bit surprised to see the Babarians she yelled at listening to her. Chayote was not fully sure if they could understand her completely but they did look at her as if they did and did not blink or look away until she was done speaking. As more and more Babarians joined into the bash, Chayote rushed at them as well, colliding with the wave of attackers and throwing them aside. She answered their savage calls for glorious violence with exactly what they asked for. At that moment, she was kind of beginning to like Planet Babari. It was here that she could rage out as hard as she wanted as the locals were tough enough to take some of it and survive, also, they all spoke the same language. The lingo of fists.

It was almost as if she was meant to always be born as a Babarian…

* * *

"Incoming transmission from Planet Earth!" an ear-piercing signal made Chayote do just that and pick her ear. A couple of beaten-up Babarians jumped up in shock from the sudden voice inside the quarters of their tyrannical empress that just appeared in their planet a year and a half ago and beat their entire society into submission before employing all of them into labor at fixing her ship and collecting rocks for her with tools she showed how to craft so that her curious fortification that was capable of space travel could grind it into food it could absorb.

"Piss off for now…" Chayote waved her hand at her crushed subjects that growled at her as if they were almost ready to challenge her for the throne once more but upon the revelation of the pain that beatings all over their bodies pulsed in, they submitted and withdrew.

Bulma's was the last face that Chayote intended to see on the screen, then again, she hadn't contacted Earth for a while. Though she had no need to and Chayote was always lousy at small talk. Bulma didn't seem too much into small talk herself and her expression looked quite grim.

"Chayote, are you done with your pilgrimage yet?" Bulma asked, skipping the meaningless chatter that made Chayote so hesitant to contact Earth in the first place.

"No. Though I don't think I want to be either. I'm on Planet Babari now, I kind of like it here. After meeting the locals, I've kind of come to accept the savage that I am rather than try and change that," Chayote admitted.

"That's wonderful, though, if you still treasure Earth, we could use your help a lot! Upa, I mean… Kami… Warned us about an incoming threat and he said that it's coming from space. Given how the only threats from space have been you and Piccolo… We can use any help we can get. They'll be here in about three days…" Bulma sounded worried, there were signs on her face that suggested she lost some sleep over the last week. No doubt, trying to find a way to contact Chayote's worn out spaceship that was on the other side of the universe by the time she found out a way to reach it.

"Three days? That's a tall order, you know, it would take me eight months to return from here to Earth at a normal pace…" Chayote scratched her head.

"Eight months!? You're that far away!?" Bulma's face got pale as it twisted in shock and hopelessness at the same time. "Th-There has to be some other way… Maybe Planet Babari has access to the Room of Spirit and Time or something…"

That would have likely only made the journey even longer. The Room extended for what seemed to be an infinite vastness for each dimension it connected. Who knew how many times it would lengthen the journey if Chayote tried it?

"That's okay, I've learned a few handy tricks about speed in Frieza Planet No. 79 so that I could keep up with all eleven of my jobs. I'll be there in four days," Chayote declared and turned off the transmission, starting up the sleepy ship systems that she hadn't interacted with for almost an entire year with. It will be a pain to reduce the duration of the journey this way for so long, she'll be worn out again by the time she reached Earth though if she dropped by Korin Tower for a Senzu, it'll be fine.

So, Goku's father must have finally decided to pick his boy up, just like Goku said he saw it in the water up on Korin Tower. And here Chayote thought she changed that vision just like she messed with a few of her own…


	107. Attack of the Saiyans

A handful of artificial traveling orbs soared across empty space. A cerulean world seemed just a meaningless dot in the distance but they closed the range in a split instant before the entry into Earth's atmosphere slowed the pods down. Like crimson comets, the pods slashed at the morning sky and crashed. A trio of the spaceships landed in a small, uninhabited island whereas the remaining group splashed into the water surrounding the island.

The ships that did crash into the archipelago shattered the island into separate, rocky chunks that threatened to drown before long. It was for that reason that the pods that landed on the island did not wait around before opening up and letting their pilots out.

"A lot of water, huh?" a man of a bruiser's build and black, unkempt hair stepped out from the pod and looked around, seeing the island that he and his pack had leveled drowning under and sending bubbling streams in their watery demise.

"I hope your son didn't grow gills or something…" a rough-sounding yet still feminine tone reached the first Saiyan as a woman of short hair emerged from her pod and ascended to the air to watch the demise of the island she crashed into.

"It's not like I had much choice…" the first Saiyan replied with a grumble.

"Did you try not sending your son to a remote world to avoid a bogus attack that you could sense coming?" a tower of a man emerged from underwater. His flat at the top, dark hair took no time at all to stand back up and shake the water off though the Saiyan seemed irked by the wet ponytail to the point where he stroked it a pair of times to wipe some of the water off.

"Quit hassling me, Tora, I had a gut feeling…" the leader of the pack wearing a green scouter closed his eyes and replied with a calm demeanor, though if it was not his best friend poking fun at him, the answer might have carried a whole different tone altogether and would have been accompanied by a much more physical response as well.

"That's right, you shouldn't joke around stuff like that, Tora," a feeble-looking Saiyan with a scar on the left side of his forehead emerging from under the ocean lectured his comrade. "Bardock did lose another son because of that mistake."

"Thinking that Frieza would stab us in the back was no mistake…" a malicious tone came from an obese Saiyan that emerged from underwater not too long after the leaner, scarred comrade of his.

Another pair of male Saiyans emerged from their wet landing and once the entire troupe had shown up, they all turned on their scouters one after another. Together they scanned the planet for notable power levels as it would have taken far less time than it would have taken one man looking all around the place. They didn't have the clearest of clues as to where on the planet they've landed and it served as an optimal way of scanning the planet to land somewhere by the equator so that one's scouter could reach all the way to the other end of the planet.

"I mean no offense, Bardock, but it's not like your own son isn't at fault either. It wasn't too wise to run off while around Prince Vegeta… This disregard toward crazy opponents is something he took from his old man, I guess, huh, Borgos?" a shorter though well-built Saiyan with a rectangular jawline flat, jet black hair turned toward the largest Saiyan in the group who looked more like a monster with mostly humanoid appearance rather than an ordinary Saiyan like his peers.

Muscle-bound giant referred to as Borgos just turned his beady eyes down at his comrade with an indifferent look. Even a veteran such as Taro would have been frightened by this behemoth of flesh and muscle, especially with a triplet of grisly scars across his forehead serving as a neat signifier of the Saiyan's toughness, though the somewhat goofy strands of black hair standing off of each side only added up to a somewhat goofy look. The skull of the almost bald Saiyan stood sharp as a stone tip at the top and would have required a fist the size of a boulder to move or ring it.

"Quiet, huh? Well, no surprise there…" Taro shrugged. "Better find the big guy something to eat before he gets all cranky and ends up breaking your boy by accident. How strong did you say he was, Bardock?"

"Not too powerful, plus, I've sent him to this cushion of a planet so he couldn't have gotten much stronger. I'd say that his power level should be around a couple of thousands by now…" Bardock, the leader of the group turned on his scouter and looked around. His face shifted from apathy to slight irritation. "This planet's still teeming with life, what the hell has Kakarot been doing here?"

"Hmph… I think we've been issued a faulty model or something…" the obese warrior Shugesh took off his scouter and looked at it in his hand, trying to figure out if he was better off crushing it or if the quirks of the device could have still been figured out. "There are crazy power levels all over this planet… Most of them are well over several thousand units strong."

"No, my scouter says the same. This is odd, this planet is outside the Frieza Army space so it's no surprise that there might be some dangerous creatures in here but… I thought you checked this planet before shooting your brat here, Bardock," the female Saiyan corrected her ally.

"I did…" Bardock replied with a stone-cold face, wondering if one of these high power levels could have killed his second son. "This doesn't make much sense, these power levels are too wild for Kakarot. Then again, if these Earthlings existed this whole time, maybe they've tempered Kakarot as well?"

"Well… This is a surprise…" Tora smirked. "Here we thought we were just picking up a mere grunt, some cannon-fodder but we may just pick up an actual asset against the King. If any of these Earthlings power up just a little bit, they'd serve as a nice warm-up for old man Vegeta, huh?"

"They might." Bardock closed his eyes and crossed his arms, thinking his next move. He had no idea as to which one of these signatures belonged to his son and they were all not too far off from one another. As much as the Saiyan tried brushing off meaningless, fatherly emotions like pride in his offspring's growth and hope for his survival, he wanted to shoot straight for the most powerful power level of all, just knowing deep down that his own son could have only been that person.

"We don't have enough pods for all of them though…" Leek, the slick and fragile-looking Saiyan, compared to his peers scratched his head, feeling baffled by this predicament. "I wonder if this planet's invented space travel and they could use spaceships of their own?"

"Don't make me laugh!" Bardock's eyes shot wide open as she clenched his fist out in front of him. "As if we, Saiyans, a proud warrior race would team up with some lowlife scum this far off in space… Kakarot's the only one we need. The rest can go die for all I care. Let's just hope that they provide us with some challenge and make us stronger in the process. After we rest on a pile of their corpses, we might need to hit Planet Vegeta directly."

"Already!?" Leek leaned back in panic. "B-Bardock, we might not be ready for that!"

"Don't soil your pants, Leek, don't forget why we're doing this. King Vegeta has become spoiled by his alliance with Frieza. He might have been the strongest Saiyan a couple of decades ago but, try as hard as he might, many actual warriors fighting his battles in the front lines have surpassed him. I have it on good authority that Prince Vegeta's been keeping tabs on our squad, he might grow suspicious and report us to his daddy. That rag won't come for us himself, he'll have Frieza sick his henchmen on us, and Frieza will dance along because deep down he's afraid of us Saiyans."

"Hmph… Still with that old thing…" Tora shook his head in disapproval.

"It's true! I don't know why but I'm certain that Frieza was about to pull something all those years ago. I'm not insane, though everyone looking at me like I was mental served as a nice motivator to grow stronger. Still, ready or not, we have to strike soon. The moment we fight on a planet closer to home Frieza will notice our true power and if we stick to far-off reaches, the little prince and his lackey will catch up to us instead." Bardock barked at his comrade.

"I guess it's for the better that we did replace those old scouter models. The old ones would have blown up in our faces from power levels this intense!" Shugesh sighed and put his scouter back on, now that his suspicions of malfunctioning scouters have been confirmed as false.

"Split up, target each notable power level individually," Bardock ordered and flared up with a crystal-clear gleam of intense aura.

"Wait, these guys are really strong, maybe we should attack them all together, and then, when we run into Kakarot, just scoop him up…" Leek stroked his neck feeling uneasy about rushing head-first into such challenging battles.

"We can't afford that…" Bardock shut his ally down. "All of them are strong, yes, but that's what we need. We need adversity, we need a challenge, we need injury so that we grow as strong as possible before attacking Planet Vegeta and kicking that weasel king off of his throne."

"I was afraid that you were going to say something like that…" Leek sighed and observed his comrades all take off at various corners of the Earth, hunting down the highest power levels. Bardock himself took off toward the north-east, where the largest power level was residing in all the way up the northern part of the continent.

* * *

The gold-incrusted frame of an old, mahogany door opened up with a barely notable screech. Whatever meek cries the doorway let out soon submitted to the vocal authority of bold steps as a well-trained, muscular frame in a tattered, indigo gi walked out from inside the Room of Spirit and Time, accompanied by a cheerful, pale floater beside him.

"Trouble! Great trouble!" Mr. Popo ran up to the emerging martial artists, rushing so much that he hunched and bent over by the knees in the escalating feeling of dread that drove him. "The Saiyans are already here!"

"Already, huh?" Tenshinhan sighed. "I had hoped to have a few hours to rest and recover but we'll have to settle for taking a few Senzu…"

"Hmm… They're almost half a day early!" Chiaotzu scratched his red cheek, feeling some fluttering butterflies deep down. "I don't think it's wise to expect Chayote help now for sure…"

"Hmmm… They're more powerful than I thought…" Upa approached the duo, almost matching Tenshinhan in bulk, having grown a considerable amount in the last seven years as he pressed the hand of the three-eyed warrior. "Thanks for pitching in to help. If you need anything, I can conjure it up, though I don't think I'll be able to help out much during the actual battle…"

"Hmm… This isn't good, the others will still be training, they'll be caught unaware…" Tenshinhan pondered out loud, closing his eyes to shut off all external stimuli and focus on his thoughts. He almost considered attacking the Saiyans by crashing into them midway to their destination.

"Why are they here?" Chiaotzu wondered.

"From what I've overheard, they're looking for Goku. Though they do not intend on leaving this planet alone once they find him either. They must be stopped by all means!" Upa took the staff of a Kami off of his back, which he had modified to resemble an ax more by attaching a head of an ax to its upper end. Even if the current Kami did not feel too confident about his chances to defeat the Saiyans by himself, he was willing to pitch in and help the rest fight.

"Are you sure you're going?" Mr. Popo ran in between Tenshinhan and Upa and looked the grown, tribal man in the eyes. "They cannot read your signature up here but once you leave – they'll be able to."

"So they're tracking us through our Ki signatures?" Tenshinhan asked.

"That's right. They have these devices on their faces that help them track one's "power level". It seems to be some sort of gadget for sensing Ki," Upa nodded.

Tenshinhan laughed out, the other three looked at him wondering if the three-eyed warrior that's been one of the few warriors to keep up with their training during the long break since the last time the Earth had been threatened had gone mad from the insane challenge placed in front of him.

"That means they'll be running into Piccolo too. Those poor fools…" Tenshinhan explained his thought process without dropping a smile.

"That's right… Piccolo has grown a great deal stronger, I was worrying that if he ever tried something – we'd no longer be able to stop him. After all, Goku and Chi-Chi haven't been training all that much since starting a family, at this point, you're probably stronger than him already…" Upa stared off into the clouds, feeling the irony of the greatest threat to his guarded planet becoming possibly its greatest asset as well.

"That isn't fair to say. Just because my power might surpass Goku's now doesn't mean anything. He's Saiyan after all, the moment he feels the heat of battle, his strength will keep skyrocketing and his mindset will become focused on training again…" Tenshinhan shrugged before he approached the edge of the God Temple and looked ahead at the planet he agreed to defend once again. Chiaotzu followed him nearby.

"I can sense them," Chiaotzu confirmed it. "They're scattering across the Earth…"

"They don't know which one of these high power levels belongs to Son Goku, they'll be hitting all of us at the same time while splitting up," Tenshinhan read the tide of the upcoming battle like a book.

"The others must sense it too, they aren't moving. They must know that there's not much they can change at this point. This sudden call for training has unnerved all of us…" Chiaotzu sighed.

"It's not that. They're staying apart on purpose. The enemy has split up, reducing their overall potential for devastation. The others must want it to stay that way…" Tenshinhan replied.

"But why would the Saiyans split up?" Chiaotzu scratched his cheek, feeling a bit taken aback by the lacking battle strategy of the invading force.

"They're Saiyans. It's safe to say they're all blockheads that want a tough and fair battle, just like Son Goku. If a challenge is what they want – we'll give it to them!" Tenshinhan declared with a confident smirk. He'd been training these past seven years without losing the drive he had when he thought the planet being at threat from Piccolo Jr.

"Hold on, it isn't wise to attack them head-on…" Upa advised. "Bulma said that Chayote declared she'd be here in four days two and a half days ago. It might not mean much but an hour or two might mean the difference between saving the world and perishing."

"Maybe so…" Tenshinhan folded. This time he didn't want to be useful only by sealing one enemy away with the Mafuba and having all of his combat potential drained from him. This time, things would be different. Still, if he could have been more clever about how the climactic battle for the fate of the world started, it may have been wiser to act like a fool and flee a bit further, let the enemy waste time by rushing to him.

Be patient, not rush into his own hasty grave as he did against Demon King Piccolo…

"It's ironic…" Tenshinhan smirked. "More than ten years ago Fortuneteller Baba appeared before us and told us that we better become strong to protect the Earth from incredibly powerful aliens. I know it's outlandish but… Who would have known that she'd be seeing this far ahead and that we'd end up training to actually protect the Earth against a real alien threat?"

Chiaotzu nodded alongside his best friend while Upa approached the pair and tapped his staff, covering the entire sky in clouds and calling upon thunderbolts imbued with divine magic to strike at them and take them to a further off location. Upa did not want to fight anywhere near the Sacred Land of Korin but it just so happened that the Saiyans were just around the equator by this time and taking Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu to the mountains walling off what once was the Red Ribbon Army base was the best option when stalling for time.

* * *

"Hmm?" Tora turned to the west as his scouter continued to beep as if calculating a number that was simply so large that the pause between the beginning of calculation and the end made the pause awkward. "Another power level suddenly emerged. A power level of 9200…"

"And another batch nearby, 2300 and 437… That's not too much but it's way too large for this planet if what Bardock told us about it is to be believed," Taro replied.

"9200!? That's way crazy! How are there Earthlings almost as strong as King Vegeta himself!?" Leek stopped and grabbed his head in panic.

"Hmmm… That's a fair point, a power level of 9200 is a decent challenge but those other two shrimps on top will make the fight annoying. Leek, continue heading north, Taro, let's team up for this," Tora turned toward the newly emerged power level. His face betrayed a certain dislike for how suddenly a new and fearsome challenger emerged on this planet but he knew it couldn't have been helped.

"But Bardock said…" Taro was about to object.

"I'm the sub-leader of this squad. Bardock's not here so I'm making this call," Tora faced the other Saiyan while the two stood opposed to one another in a deadlock of intense glares. Taro was the first to fold though he didn't seem at all frightened by the sub-leader of his squad, rather excited to face these new challengers alongside him.

"Fine, just make sure you don't get in my way…" Taro taunted his comrade.

"That's funny, maybe I should leave you to face that power level of 9200, seeing how it is greater than yours…" Tora smirked with a look aimed at his defiant comrade who broke only a single drop of sweat from his flat, rectangular forehead.

"Hey, hey… You'd die against such a guy too, we'll need to take 'em on together." Taro replied with less machismo in his tone and more cold reason than usual.


	108. Master-Student Kamehameha

Krillin threw a rapid barrage of wild kicks in the air before regaining his balance and turning his attention west. He had been so focused on his training that he had missed out on the foreign Ki signature until it was careening right at the Kame House island. There was no way that it was tracking anything in particular or hitting this spot directly, it was Krillin's own Ki that must have been attracting this assailant.

"They're coming, Krillin!" Muten Roshi ran out of the Kame House. Blond Launch walked out behind him, loading up a submachine gun but Muten Roshi turned around and began pushing the woman back into the house.

"Hold on just a second, Launch, this isn't a battle you should be taking part in!" Muten Roshi objected, finding an easy opportunity to slip his hands onto the woman's breasts as he pushed her further into the house. It had earned him a few knuckles and Launch hit like a truck. She certainly was no ordinary woman but, judging from Krillin's face, even he wondered if he could take the enemy on himself.

There was no other choice, Krillin knew it. Now that he was no longer focusing on his training and decided to scope the situation of the battle out, it became apparent that the Saiyan did not come alone, just as Upa had warned them. Though the Saiyans decided to split themselves up, maybe it was a gamble, they were trying to hold everyone off so that the Earthlings didn't team-up…

"No luck finding help, huh? Guess it's going to be all up to us…" Muten Roshi left the Kame House with more than a few nudges all over his face that were beginning to swell up. As pathetic as it looked, the Ki signature of the old man began to soar as he increasingly became more serious.

"The enemy has split themselves apart. They must be trying to confront all of us individually and keep us from teaming up…" Krillin turned to his mentor. He didn't feel too brave about Muten Roshi choosing to fight alongside him but he had trained on the island for a few days and Muten Roshi helped him retrain his body after a few years of a rather lax training schedule.

"That's not it. They are looking for one of their own but they don't know which one of the higher battle powers is the one. That is why they are attacking all of the powerful fighters individually…" Muten Roshi explained as he took his position beside Krillin.

"We need to take this elsewhere. This battle's gonna get crazy and your home is going to get totaled. Launch-san will be put in danger," Krillin glanced at his mentor who nodded.

"We must make sure that the Saiyan doesn't get too excited and attack the Kame House on his way. We'll confront him first, then lure him away," Muten Roshi corrected his student.

"Blast it! You guys ain't Kakarot!" Shugesh grunted floating in mid-air, catching the full attention of the two martial artists that decided to stand their ground and intercept the Saiyan warrior.

"Kakarot? That's Goku's Saiyan name. I guess you were right, Roshi-sama…" Krillin gave his mentor an approving look before focusing back on the intimidating chubby floating over the Kame Island. "You guys better get off our planet! Goku doesn't want anything to do with you!"

"Huh? So you know who we are and I guess you must know Kakarot too… That's convenient. Won't have to waste my time jabbering with you pests. I can go right on and start breaking some bones!" Shugesh cracked his knuckles, smirking at the two Earthlings.

"Hold on, don't you want to know how we know about who you are and what you want?" Muten Roshi raised his cane up and pointed it at the airborne Saiyan brute.

"Roshi-sama, is this really the time for that?" Krillin raised an inquisitive eyebrow at his mentor.

"Stay put, we need to prolong this for as long as possible. Bulma said that there is a fair chance that Chayote may be joining us in the heat for battle. It might be beneficial to keep this brute away from the others and let Tenshinhan, Goku, and even Piccolo handle them while we waste this guy's time. Once Chayote joins us, this will be over for sure!" a telepathic signal rang in Krillin's mind, making the bald martial artist cheer up a bit and made him break his fighting stance with a lax expression as he decided he'd help his mentor beat his gums.

"Huh? Not really, I'd rather just smash you two to bits for wasting my time and go find the real Kakarot!" Shugesh pressed a button on his scouter as numbers began counting up on the green monocle part of the gadget. "Hmmm, power levels of 1321 and 879? Something really must be off with this damn thing, I could have sworn the readings were higher a minute ago…"

"Krillin, these Saiyans use those devices on their eyes to locate their targets. For them to waste their time with such gizmos, it means that they aren't capable of sensing their opponent's Ki. Destroy them and it will leave the enemy blinded," Muten Roshi once more contacted his pupil mentally.

"Right. Leave it to Roshi-sama's experience to carry us through this. He doesn't appear to be aware that we're not at full power yet too. We can catch him unaware this way…" Krillin focused on these thoughts, making Muten Roshi's mustache line tilt upward a little bit by each side, suggesting that the man was smiling.

"That's my pupil…" Muten Roshi commended Krillin mentally.

"Oh well… I'll just kill you two anyway and go find the real Kakarot then!" Shugesh charged at the pair out of the blue, bursting with a transparent aura that emanated sheer brutality and immense power. Krillin braced for impact, putting his arms up while Muten Roshi remained oblivious to the charge of the Saiyan ruffian.

Krillin pushed his mentor away with a sideways shoulder bash and took the brunt of Shugesh's attack, riding the overwhelming force backward but maintaining his balance. The sand beneath Krillin's feet turned into wet splatters and cool brushes of the boundless ocean as he careened back through its surface, maintaining his position above the water's surface via the flight technique.

"Take this!" Shugesh yelled out as he continued his attack on Krillin, diving with a flying kick right at him. Krillin didn't move at all, he absorbed the strike right at the center of his cross-shaped block and skid across the ocean until he felt the brush of grass again. Shugesh continued to charge at him with short and separate bashes, lacking any semblance of martial arts prowess, proving easier for Krillin to avoid.

"Nice thinking, there's no way this brute would let us take him to fight elsewhere, let him think he is winning!" Muten Roshi commended his pupil on a feat of nice thinking on his feet as Krillin managed to take Shugesh to another nearby island where they could fight him all they wanted. The elder martial arts master hurried to his student's aid.

Krillin's body flew into a nearby rock, hitting it with such velocity and force that the rock outright blew up from the erupting pressure but Krillin burst forth out from the rubble and rejoined the battle with nothing but dust on his orange gi. Muten Roshi rejoined his student in battle, he felt a bit embarrassed by the fact but he couldn't see his opponent at all the first time he attacked. They really did need to power up to their limit to even stand a chance against this opponent.

"Huh… Something's off… I hit you with some of my best shots. Someone with a power level of just 1321 would have been crushed by these attacks! Stupid new scouter models! Can't even know how powerful the enemy is!" Shugesh growled to himself, growing visibly upset by the fact that his meaningful attempts at ending Krillin's life were shrugged off like that.

"Idiot!" Krillin pulled his eyelid and stuck out his tongue. "That's what you get for relying on some computer to tell you how to fight…"

Krillin charged forward with a flying kick but Shugesh vanished and appeared up in the air, popping his scouter back on and attempting to calculate his opponent's real strength. The readings he saw perplexed Shugesh as shock and awe soon overtook the frustration and aggression gleaming on his face.

"Power levels of 7929 and 3584!? T-This can't be!" Shugesh exclaimed. "Your power levels were insignificant just a while ago, how could they have skyrocketed like that!?"

"They must not be teaching you how to fight back on the Saiyan home planet. Before we were reserving our strength for the upcoming battle. There was no need to show you all of our power." Muten Roshi pointed his cane at the enemy, feeling a little easier knowing that his constant training has paid off and that his level of strength still bothered the enemies that his pupils encountered.

"Right! Now that we've traded blows, I can tell that I'm stronger than you. I've got a better plan, Roshi-sama. Let's take care of this guy and then go help the others. The Saiyans they've run into must be stronger than this guy," Krillin glanced at his mentor who seemed to approve of Krillin's plan as he nodded lightly while stroking his beard.

"You bastard! Underestimate me, will you!? We Saiyans have no equal!" Shugesh ground his teeth and clenched his fist out in front of him, letting his swelling up Ki create a field of intense pressure around his fist that bent the light passing through it and colored the bubble of sheer force bursting out in a mean shade of pink. "Massive Catapult!"

The energy field that Shugesh had created around his arm expanded to cover his entire body as the Saiyan flew toward Krillin and Muten Roshi. The master and his student both extended their arms out and drew them back to their sides, focusing their Ki and channeling it all throughout their body only to form spheres of concentrated energy in their hands.

"Ka-Me!" they both chanted together. "Ha-Me!"

Muten Roshi's body swelled up, ripping the sleeveless shirt on him apart as his upper torso became oversized for his bulking up legs to bear. The energy blast that the old martial arts master was channeling grew almost five times in size while Krillin's own aura turned blazing red, lighting his still channeling Kamehameha wave ablaze. The pair thrust their arms out together.

"MAX Power Kamehameha!"

"Hot-Blooded Kamehameha!"

The two Kamehameha waves flew alongside one another, merging at the very end right before clashing with the charging Saiyan. The Master-Student Kamehameha wave appeared to barely at all struggle with the opposing force, instead choosing to swallow the pink Ki bubble whole and tearing the battle armor clean off of the rampaging Saiyan brute as he plummeted down and smacked in a bone-churning manner against the island floor, cracking the rock-hard ground that he hit.

"His power level is really small but it's still there…" Krillin closed his eyes, panting from having unleashed all of his power in one blast just to take care of the opponent quickly. "We should finish him off. If he recovers, he'll grow way stronger, just like Goku and Chayote do after a tough battle."

"By the time that Chayote returns, it will not matter. Even if this warrior multiplies his power several times, he would not be able to defeat Goku or Piccolo. With his current lack of martial arts skill, he is of no threat to us. Let's leave it up to Chayote and Goku on deciding what we do with them. Without an ability to hide their Ki, they will be easy to find and defeat anyway," Muten Roshi placed his hand on Krillin's shoulder and stopped his student from killing his unconscious, whited-out opponent.

Krillin lowered the one hand he held raised over his head and sighed. He didn't like the idea of leaving this guy just lying beaten here but it didn't look like he enjoyed the thought of killing him either. The young warrior felt conflicted about this, it did not take someone with an intimate knowledge of the workings of his student's mind like Muten Roshi to tell.

"Umigame!" Muten Roshi yelled out, his voice augmented by the supernatural strength of his lungs reached far and wide and before long a brown sea turtle emerged from underwater on a nearby shore. The old martial arts master hopped onto the back of the turtle and turned back to Krillin.

"Let's head out. Yamcha and Goku are the nearest ones to our location though I feel like Yamcha might need our help a little bit more…" Muten Roshi rushed Krillin just so his student recovered from the deep pit he was in, staring at his trembling hands and switching the focus between his own shaking body back to his beaten opponent.

"You aren't going to fly, Roshi-sama?" Krillin wondered as he took off, keeping it relatively low and by the level of the sea surface so that he could talk to Muten Roshi who lagged behind a little bit on Umigame's back.

"My flying is a little shaky. I feel like riding Umigame is still a little bit faster and it doesn't wear on me at all," Roshi replied as he looked on ahead at the horizons extending past the oceans. "I'll switch to flying once we reach the shore. Yamcha appears to have been training in his old hideout back in Diablo Desert while Goku is still in his home with Chi-Chi… He must not have felt the need to leave anywhere crazy to train, I guess."

"Goku's changed a little bit. He's been training all this time but not like he used to be. He's training just because he likes fighting and wants to grow stronger but there's nothing pressing him to train harder. I was a lot the same way. I still trained these past seven years but I never felt like there was something I was training myself for so I didn't blame myself for skipping a day or two." Krillin sighed.

"What about Yamcha?" Muten Roshi wondered. "I haven't seen him for a couple of years. Not since our last get-together in Capsule Corp."

"Yamcha hasn't been training at all for the first four years. He felt like he didn't need to, maybe he felt like he owed Bulma something so they've been hanging out together. It was only after Yamcha and Bulma broke up that he started training again though Yamcha's been putting effort into it ever since he did start training again. He might even be stronger than me at this point…" Krillin replied.

"This was your first time, wasn't it?" Muten Roshi turned his eyes to Krillin who just kept his pace up evenly with his striding master and stared ahead with blank eyes. "Facing the need to kill somebody like that…"

"I guess so… I've killed my opponents before but they were demons. It's easy to blow those guys up and not think about it. Hell, if I didn't know Chayote and Goku, it would have been pretty easy not thinking about killing these Saiyans too but… Every time we fought some serious threat before, it was in a tournament or that threat was a demon and… No. I never had to kill anyone up until now. It sometimes happened. Maybe we've ended up killing a few Rainbow Brigade soldiers but never like this. Not deliberately…" Krillin replied.

He must not have wanted to think about it as his face sunk in gloom once Muten Roshi brought it up and forced the young man to return to that island again, stand over his beaten and broken opponent while knowing that he needed to finish him off or else the Saiyan would grow stronger and he might not have this chance ever again.

"These Saiyans won't hesitate to finish us off but don't feel obliged to stoop to their level. Remember, just live your life to the fullest, use martial arts to defend the weak from those that think they can bully them just because they're stronger and things will turn out alright. Don't try and take up the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. Just do what you feel is right and don't force yourself to do what you don't want to," Muten Roshi advised his pupil. Krillin's loss faded away before the old man's eyes, he turned to the side and nodded with a light smile on his face.

"I just now remembered that these Saiyans would end up running into Piccolo too. I've never thought that Piccolo would end up helping us save the Earth…" Krillin dragged his hand across the back of his head while he pushed the weight off of his chest through his airways and out his mouth.

"True. There is one warrior who will feel no qualms about crushing the poor Saiyans that decide to stand in his way. I have no doubts that Piccolo won't take kindly to invaders threatening to reduce the world he sees as his for the taking to ruin. It might be fortunate that Goku did not finish Piccolo off all those years ago…" Muten Roshi nodded in agreement.

"I guess sometimes acting on one's gut feeling and not reason can lead to good things though it's unlikely that the Saiyan we beat could ever end up helping us…" Krillin said.

"You're off on your own, old perv…" Umigame stopped all of a sudden right before hitting the shore, throwing his absent-minded master off of his back flying though Muten Roshi managed to balance himself out in mid-air and transition from free-flight straight at the dirt present on the beach that the pair had reached into a controlled and paced flight.

"Sometimes I wish I'd have made soup out of that old sea turtle with that attitude. If only I didn't know his kids and didn't feel bad about it…" Muten Roshi shook his fist over his head in the direction of the defiant sea turtle who turned around and submerged to the bottom of the ocean shore, swimming further into the ocean.


	109. The Tenacious Battlefield Diva

Yamcha turned around in a snap motion, looking back with a serious look, filled with gloom. He had been too absorbed in his training to notice it earlier – the foreign Ki signature that was massive though unfamiliar to him and could have therefore only belonged to a Saiyan.

"What's wrong, Yamcha-san?" Puar yelled out in his high-pitched voice as he floated up to over Yamcha's shoulders. Being a lifelong friend to the man that once was just a lowly desert bandit, the shapeshifting cat accompanied him on his training trip ever since Yamcha split up with Bulma to do the only other thing that stimulated him – martial arts.

He was at a crisis then and Puar had to be there to do his part as man's best friend. Although now it seemed like the entire Earth was in a crisis. Puar looked like he was just lucky enough to be able to assist Earth with its invasion problem by just being there with his own best friend.

"The Saiyans, they're here already. They're headed here, almost like they can sense my Ki…" Yamcha explained without ever dismissing the gravity of the situation. "You should hide, Puar."

"But what if you need my help?" Puar floated in a triangular formation, right in front of Yamcha's face, begging to not be dismissed and urging his friend to make him useful in his own way.

"Knowing that it's Saiyans we face… I might just need that but first, we need to make sure you survive until I need that help. Then it will be like we practiced…" Yamcha gave his friend a thumb-up.

Hesitant to leave and hide, Puar nodded and floated off and onto the rocky house that he and his best friend once called their hideout. Where they lived, where they stashed their loot and watched television until the late hours or until they heard a jet in the distance. Where they sharpened Yamcha's scimitar or cleaned the barrel of Puar's rocket launcher which he bought from the scholarship money received for the graduation with exemplary results from the Southern Transformation Kindergarten.

Overwhelmed by the sudden rush of pleasant memories, Yamcha had to force himself to turn back at the direction of the oncoming Saiyans. He checked it multiple times though it seemed as if there was just one Saiyan headed at him. He could sense a few more unfamiliar Ki signatures to him, some of them stronger than the one headed right at his location, though those guys all missed him by hundreds and even thousands of miles and continued to head elsewhere.

It was safe to say that the Saiyans did not invade Earth to destroy the brave desert bandit Yamcha.

"At least they're not sending their strongest guy after me…" Yamcha struck a smirk of confidence as he patiently awaited the arrival of the Saiyan.

"Hmph… So you're the Earthling of anomalous strength, huh? What a piss-poor excuse of a warrior…" a woman's voice with some tomboyish language flew out of the mouth of a Saiyan warrior floating in mid-air with her hands thrown to the sides. Like a vixen, the woman waggled her tail behind her with its hair sharpened and sticking out to the sides, displaying her teeth in a twisted expression of brutality.

"Of course my opponent would turn out to be a woman…" Yamcha sighed and shook his head.

"What's that? You should be the last bastard on this rock underestimating me! You don't deserve the awesome power level that the scouter attributed to you before!" the Saiyan lady ignited a pair of Ki blasts in both her hands before throwing a wild barrage of them right at Yamcha.

"Awesome power level, you say?" Yamcha smirked in excitement as he deflected the few Ki blasts that actually threatened to hit him with the back of his hand while the rest detonated around him, sinking him into a cloud of smoke.

"That's right, I thought your power level to be almost twice as big as mine, though don't get any wrong ideas, scumbag. Once I transform into a Great Ape, you're gonna get crushed all the same!" the Saiyan woman cursed at Yamcha, turning on her scouter again and measuring the power level of the warrior she thought to have wounded just now.

"I see, well then, you guys have picked a wrong time to land. We're off night time for a few hours. It's the full moon, so I guess you guys did get that much right…" Yamcha shrugged while the smoke around him settled.

"Heh, a power level of 1750?! Don't make me laugh with that drivel! I won't even need my Great Ape transformation to pummel your scrawny ass!" the female Saiyan threw her fist out.

"Heh, you're a lot like Chayote used to be. Making all the same kind of mistakes. With Chayote appearing years ago, our planet isn't quite as vulnerable to the likes of you…" Yamcha took a fighting pose, similar to a more balanced stance of his Wolf Fang Fist.

"Chayote? That's a Saiyan name…" the female warrior raised an eyebrow and landed on the ground. "Before I kill you, tell me about this Chayote. If she's another Saiyan, we will take her with us as well. We need all the manpower we can get in our coup."

"Huh? And what do I get from it?" Yamcha shrugged. "Sounds like a bad deal, I'm afraid you'll have to make me, missy…"

"Missy!? An underdeveloped alien maggot like you will refer to me as Celipa, or else I'll crush you like the discarded shed skin of a bug that you are!" Celipa shook her fist out, growling through her teeth. "And your reward would have been a few extra seconds of life that you'd have earned while telling me about this Chayote."

"Well… I was going to ask you to tell me your name in return for the information but since you obliged me…" Yamcha smiled and gave his opponent a thumb-up. "Chayote is a Saiyan, just like you, she was rough around the edges, just like you but she's gotten a lot nicer."

"Figures…" Celipa spat aside in disgust. "Of course a youngling would turn soft in a place like this. Damn Bardock… By sending his little tike to a planet scheduled for another Saiyan, he deprived them both of solitude and abandonment, necessary to breed character. I bet his little Kakarot is soft just like this Chayote…"

"Kakarot? That's how Chayote calls Goku, that must be his Saiyan name…" Yamcha scratched his chin. "So you're here for him, huh?"

"Not that it will matter to a scrawny poppycock like you. I'll make you disappear in no time flat. You better make your last seconds on this world worth my while!" Celipa growled as she charged forward. Yamcha stepped aside, avoiding a knee strike and casually evaded a flurry of the woman's blows.

"You know, a long time ago, I'd have been crippled fighting a woman…" Yamcha mocked his opponent after moving behind her back in a split instant.

"You dare mock me and pull your punches!?" Celipa growled, shaking her fist out in front of her. "You damned coward, stand still and fight like the worthless sack of shit you are!"

"Wow, you've got a real personality…" Yamcha closed his eyes and nodded to himself. "Way wilder than I ever recall Chayote being like."

"You damn shit-stain!" Celipa raged on, letting her Ki burst out wildly as she burnt through her stamina just standing there and raging in a temporary flow of power that would eventually end up burning her out like a candle. It was a mystery if the Saiyan even knew that much about Ki control to realize that her temporary growth past whatever her "power level" was would serve as her ultimate downfall.

"Say, you should calm down and see what that gizmo of yours has to say about my "power level" now…" Yamcha suggested with a teasing gesture. "Go on, I'll try a little bit harder now…"

"Go figure a rat-bastard like you would try and fool yourself with the readings of my busted-ass scouter!" Celipa yelled out while she straightened her back and pressed the button to measure up Yamcha's power level. "N-No way!" her face blanked out.

Yamcha stood there straight and gleaming like a nugget of gold, not a single outburst of his aura, just sheer little bit of effort from his part.

"4400… 7600… Impossible, it's going far past even the earlier broken reading!" Celipa exclaimed in the most restraint and respect that she's shown in her entire stay on this planet. "Tsk…"

The hysterical Saiyan woman removed her scouter, refusing to take into account the readings that it showed, taking them for skewed nonsense as she placed it inside a tiny pouch behind her back, attached to her waist and normally concealed underneath her tail which was now flowing and waggling freely.

"Hey! You weren't finished yet!" Yamcha objected. "This is a matter of pride for me, I was about to show you my actual fighting strength!"

"Hmph… Don't get cocky, you tripe. What does it matter how much hogwash that stupid piece of junk shows if it's all fake anyway? Didn't you hear me earlier? It's busted!" Celipa yelled out, clapping her head a couple of times in an offensive, physical suggestion that Yamcha was mentally challenged and couldn't comprehend her earlier words.

"Fine…" Yamcha sighed. "I guess you won't believe me until I prove to you that you're way out of your league here."

In a blink, the long-haired and battle-scarred martial artist closed in to his opponent. The shock that this sudden outburst of speed invited to Celipa's face made the Saiyan woman flinch and stiffen up her stance. Before she even put her hands up to defend herself, Yamcha was already busy sweeping her leg. With his opponent spinning in mid-air without any sense of control or balance, the more experienced fighter threw a back-handed strike to the woman's chest, cracking her Saiyan armor and sending her careening upward in a diagonal trajectory upward.

Yamcha raced after and corrected the direction of Celipa's flight with a jumping high kick, sending her flying through the clouds at once. For the first time in that battle, Yamcha's aura burst with crystal clarity as the martial artist raced after his extraterrestrial opponent. Once the distance between them was closed, Yamcha threw a pair of cross-direction swipes with his paws before kicking at Celipa's shins, sending her spinning in mid-air as he vanished to a location right above her and sent the Saiyan crashing back down with a downward gripping palm strike.

"I hope you haven't had enough just yet. But I had to make you believe me…" Yamcha rustled his curly, black hair behind his back feeling a bit regretful for the smackdown he laid on the female Saiyan warrior though he had burnt severely from underestimating fearsome women fighters before.

"You…" Celipa sent out a grungy taunt, filled with embarrassment, dirty and bloody in its tone and volume, mirroring the state in which she rose from the crater that she left on the ground. "C-Could it be…? Could it be that the scouters weren't lying after all?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time!" Yamcha emphasized before pointing at her waist. "Now put it back on, I wanna put in some real effort now and see how high we can make that number go, okay?"

"You… You weren't even fighting with your full strength up to now? You mean you can make your power level go higher or lower and you can actually make it go higher than this?" Celipa blanked out. She did as she was asked and placed her scouter back on before turning it on. The scouter's reading transitioned into the five-digit realm, Celipa could no longer keep it up.

"11 750…" the Saiyan warrior let out a husky breath in shock.

"Wow! That's pretty amazing, right? I mean… Your reaction seems to say a lot but I don't have much context… Well, I can't be too surprised, I did train with Chayote for a long time before the tournament seven years ago!" Yamcha cheered on himself.

"Yamcha!" Krillin's voice came in from the side. "We sensed your Ki going up and thought you might need help."

"Krillin, Muten Roshi… No, I've got things handled here…" Yamcha gave his friends a thumb-up.

A mad cackling of the Saiyan woman interrupted the spirited reunion of two friends and their martial arts teacher. All three turned at Celipa who transitioned into a fit of intense laughter as her forehead drowned in trickling blood, making the entire scene look quite grim.

"Reinforcements, huh?" Celipa finally settled down enough to speak properly. "I guess one of us got too carried away and got themselves beaten before they could transform."

"Transform? You mean that fatso could transform into a Great Ape? Makes sense I guess…" Krillin scratched the back of his bald head.

"Hmph… You speak nonsense, Saiyan," Muten Roshi challenged the statement of the woman. "While it is true that today is the day of full-moon. You miscalculated your attack, the moon won't be rising for six whole hours. You're finished. Pack up and go home before you get knocked flat like your buddy."

"Fatso? So you've curbstomped Shugesh, you'll pay for that!" Celipa raised up her hand and formed a Ki blast. "I'll make sure to slowly crush every single rib in the cage before having every shattered piece drown your chest cavity in the blood of your punctured heart!"

"I guess she won't listen to reason either…" Krillin sighed and placed his hands by his side, ready for a Kamehameha.

However, the attack that Celipa was about to launch wasn't a mere Ki blast, nor did she just fling it at the enemies she wanted to destroy. The bright ray of sunshine grew even brighter while only barely growing in size. As the intensity and the luminosity of the sphere escalated, the round blob of light elevated higher and higher over Celipa's hand until it formed an almost hypnotic and perfectly shaped little star in her grasp.

"Her Ki output has… Actually decreased… What's going on?" Yamcha wondered.

"You fools! Did you really think that we weren't able to trigger the transformation by ourselves!?" Celipa barked out in triumphant tone as she winded up and threw the Ki blast rocketing upward before it expanded drastically in size to where it almost appeared like a full moon in its own right.

"Oh no! The date of their arrival, it fooled us!" Muten Roshi turned pale, realizing his own folly in taking the date of the Saiyan landing that might have very well been just an accident for all that they cared for granted. The Saiyans had little care in when they would be landing or when the full-moon would actually show itself.

"That's right, you senile crap! As if a proud and powerful Saiyan warrior troupe would ever stoop so low as to count down days and planet cycles in preparation for their invasion like a bunch of nerds! That's how those weasels bowing their heads to Frieza do things, not us! This is the power that will make us stomp King Vegeta, claim his throne and then kick Frieza himself to the curb!" Celipa exclaimed as she turned her gaze upward, ready to take in and bask in the artificial moonlight and trigger her destructive transformation.

"If she transforms now, there's no way we'll be able to stop her! We've struggled to contain Goku when he was just a child…" Yamcha grumbled.

"That's right, you chaff, a Saiyan's power level grows tenfold when they transform to a Great Ape. Naturally, as a warrior of a power level of 2000, my power level will become superior to all of yours!" Celipa laughed out as she stared upward at the grey mass of the simulated full-moon for what seemed like entire minutes.

Something was off…

Celipa let out a gentle grunt as she clutched her belly area and let out a pathetic wheeze and all breath left her lungs. Desperate for oxygen, the Saiyan woman collapsed unconscious on the ground while the moon over her head let out an emphatic and acute poof before a not too large, blue cat emerged from a cloud of dust formed as the after-effect of Puar's transformation.

"Nice thinking, Puar…" Yamcha complimented his best friend.

"For a moment there I was beginning to think that I would need to somehow try to get behind her and cut her tail off, that would have been a real pain," Krillin sighed easier, wiping sweat and coarse sand grains off of his face.

"Hmmm… Indeed, using the Mafuba right now would have drained me of any remaining strength for the battle to come and there are more Saiyans left to stop." Muten Roshi stroked his beard. "This is too dangerous. We need to warn the others about this development in the Saiyans' battle tactics. In addition, we have too many useful tools against the Great Ape transformation between the four of us to just go home and hope for the best."

"Agreed…" Yamcha nodded. "There are Ki signatures far off to the west, all the way on the mountain range south to the Sacred Land of Korin, that's gotta be Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu and… Maybe Yajirobe? I wonder who else might be that powerful?"

"Things will be over by the time we get there, whoever the winner might be," Muten Roshi shook his head. "Mount Paozu is not too far east from here and Goku doesn't live too far off from there as well."

"That's right, Goku is the target of those guys, it makes sense to go help him…" Krillin agreed.

"What about this woman? Do we just leave her lying her like this?" Yamcha scratched the back of his head.

"Unless you have a better idea. I'm not wasting most of my strength sealing her away." Muten Roshi turned back to look at Yamcha with a strict glare as he and Krillin floated above the battlefield already, itching to go pitch in to Goku's fight.

Seeing his friends take off, Yamcha scooped Celipa up and flew to place her inside of his hideout where she didn't run into the risk of dying to the harsh sunlight of the Diablo Desert or its more savage inhabitants. Her safety inside there was not guaranteed but her odds of survival now were far greater than if he had just left her lying on the desert sand, passed out.

After securing his downed opponent, Yamcha took off after his friends on a flying trip to Goku's family home.


	110. Explicit Tactics

"Ten-san!" Chiaotzu let out a yelp though his friend continued looking on over the peaks of the mountain range ahead. He had chosen a flat mountaintop for the battleground and the Saiyans appeared to have followed right after.

"Yeah, I know…" Tenshinhan closed his eyes, tracking the motion of the appearing Saiyans through his other senses, hearing the long hair of one of the Saiyans rustling in the wind, the taps of their boots as the Saiyans landed behind him only to be faced by Upa and Chiaotzu.

"Do you think any of these are Kakarot?" Taro looked at Tora who just scratched his head.

"We don't know how what the runt looks like but… This pale guy looks like a ghost, that bald guy has three eyes and that guy might be Kakarot though his power level is too puny even for a low-class Saiyan warrior. Tough luck…" Tora shook his head to himself and shrugged.

"To think that Earthlings could possess power levels as high as 9200 and that this power level wouldn't even belong to Kakarot…" Taro growled out frustrated. "We should just transform and squash these fools. Maybe Bardock had better luck and he found his brat already?"

"We can't do that. We need to make this a little bit difficult on us or else we might not succeed in our coup. That's just fine, if we work together we can take the 9200 guy down, let's see…" Tora turned on his scouter to scan through the power levels of the enemy to determine which one of them was the most powerful. "The one with the highest battle power is the three-eyed one. The pale vermin looks pretty dangerous too but we should be able to take him and that Earthling with girly hair is a complete weakling."

"I see. So you have come for Son Goku," Tenshinhan stated, finally opening all three of his eyes and acknowledging the enemy. "You need his power for some cosmic coup of yours, do you?"

"Shit, that three-eyed bastard's been listening in on us!" Taro threw his fist out and shook it, threatening Tenshinhan's nosy behavior.

"Who cares, none of them will live to tell anybody anything they've heard," Tora shrugged and adopted a fighting stance. Tenshinhan noted how this Saiyan was not just a brutish type to swing his fists wildly and even though his stance was ridden with flaws, evidently, he had picked up a few tips on fighting from the battles he'd experienced.

"You have made three mistakes which will bring about your downfall," Tenshinhan stated.

"Huh? Three mistakes? What're those?" Taro scratched his head, gesturing at Tora to halt his attack until Tenshinhan could make his point.

"First – you've attacked a stronger opponent with fewer numbers. From what I sense, your individual Ki are inferior to mine, meaning that you are weaker than me even the way I am now. Judging from your approach, you without a doubt intended on utilizing teamwork in bringing me down but you failed to take into consideration that I have superior numbers on my side too. You might have underestimated Chiaotzu and Kami, in that case, well… That would be a mistake too," Tenshinhan pointed out while warming up and removing his uniform to expose his bare and trained chest to the harsh elements of the mountain peaks.

"Heh, you got us there, we did mean on pummeling you together as a team…" Taro smiled without dropping the threatening look in his eyes.

"Then – you just assumed that the states we are in now are our full power. If you rely on the data that your gadgets provide you with and not track the tide of the battle using your natural senses – that is just bound to bring you trouble," Tenshinhan placed his arms to his side and let out a hefty battle cry, unleashing all of his Ki at once and causing the scouters of the Saiyans to turn on automatically and begin counting up as the emergency alarm feature of the scouters acted up from the immense power surge.

"H-His battle power is… Rising?" Taro took a couple of cowardly steps back.

"10 000… 12 000… It isn't stopping!" Tora broke his fighting stance, shocked at the overflowing power of the Earthling before him.

As Tenshinhan's power shook the entire mountain range, sending crashing avalanches to the uninhabited rocky wastelands below and sunk them all in snowfall, Chiaotzu also powered up beside his friend, synchronizing with Tenshinhan's power.

"That shrimp's power is also rising!" Taro flipped out. "The power level of 4804!? That's more than twice than we previously picked up!"

"Forget that, the three-eyed bastard… Look at him, he's a freak!" Tora stared at Tenshinhan as his Ki finally stopped surging and the blizzards that he had picked up in his wake had begun to settle down, dropping fistfuls of snow down below once no supernatural fluctuations of air and energy held them levitating up.

"Huh? My scouter's not done counting yet, what does yours say?" Taro turned to Tora.

"18 656…" Tora stated with a muzzled voice and twitching, whited out in shock eyes. "Forget working together, we need to transform now!"

"This is also not the highest that my combat power can rise," Tenshinhan stated, raising his fist up in front of him. A blazing flare erupted in a whirlwind of infernal flames and swallowed the three-eyed martial artist up, dyeing his skin in an unhealthy, swollen up hue but forcing the scouter to continuously count upward until it exploded right off of the pair of the Saiyans' faces, leaving tiny bruises where the unfortunate workplace accident had occurred.

"H-How high did it go?" Taro turned to Tora with a shake to the motions of his body.

"Who knows, even the newer models blew up… These shouldn't have worked on everything but the Great Apes and the Frieza's most trusted elite men," Tora appeared to have already been beaten before the battle had even started.

Tenshinhan vanished, the burning up aura that surrounded him had erupted in a star-shaped formation as it failed to keep up with its master. Taro yelled out in pain as he took a few stumbling steps forward and collapsed. Reacting to the shouts of pain from his ally, Tora turned toward his comrade only to see the image of Tenshinhan with a flying knee kick frozen in mid-air, having just knocked out his friend. With a graceful backflip, Tenshinhan moved back and vanished in mid-air again.

Just as Tora turned back to try and witness his opponent back in his original position, he found Tenshinhan standing right in front of him to the point where if Tora leaned down just a little bit, he'd have touched Tenshinhan's forehead with his nose. Despite finding his enemy lacking in height, it was Tora who stumbled back and collapsed to his knees.

"Normally I'd enjoy a good fight, I am, after all, a martial artist. But the fight that your kind brings does not further martial arts in any way. You are all brute force and very little skill therefore Earth's martial arts would be wasted on the likes of you. Pick up your friend and leave, now that you know how hopelessly you are outmatched here," Tenshinhan glared at Tora with a strict look and allowed his surging Hot-Red mode to vanish before he began suffering the aftereffects already. The fact that the body of the three-eyed martial artist was so tempered that he did not mind the sharp contrast of the freezing mountain weather right after extinguishing the flaming Ki which threatened to burn out all of his bodily fluids from within served only as a testament to the grueling training that the two best friends had gone through in these past seven years while Earth enjoyed its peace.

"You… Cocky fool! Don't underestimate the Saiyans!" Tora bellowed as he threw his arm to the side, igniting a bright, silver flash in his right hand and winding it up for a toss. His body froze in mid-motion, shocking the Saiyan himself as to why he could not move a muscle and even his Power Ball that enabled his transformation into the Great Ape had dissipated in his hand.

Tenshinhan threw a restrained backhand strike to the front of Tora's face, sending the lumbering Saiyan flying off of the mountain peak and crashing through a pair of other mountains, reducing them to rubble at once in the Saiyan's crashing pathway. Such an eventuality was considered when the three were choosing the location for their upcoming tangle with the Saiyans.

"Chiaotzu, was it you?" Tenshinhan turned back to see his friend floating with both of his index fingers pointing forward.

"Yep!" the ghoulish martial artist nodded. "He was gonna do something so I stopped him."

"What an odd attack…" Upa noted.

"Odd? How?" Tenshinhan wondered.

"Well, Saiyans seem quite brutish and primitive with their choice of techniques. Their entire lifestyle appears to be suited to better serve their combat potential. All that matters in their society is sheer strength and even their Ki attacks serve to further that purpose and overwhelm the enemy. They lack versatility in the way they fight, all of their Ki techniques appear to solely try and injure or kill their opponent," Upa pointed out.

Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu nodded in sync.

"Though that last attack didn't boost that Saiyan's Ki at all, in fact, it appeared to reduce it and only drain it a bit. He would have actually become a bit weaker when using that attack which is unusual for a Ki technique, especially for a Saiyan…" Upa elaborated on his point.

"That brightness… Perhaps that technique was sort of like the Solar Fist?" Tenshinhan wondered.

"That is interesting, the enemy appeared to be speaking about some sort of transformation too…" Upa reached to his hind pocket and drew out a ball of thread while his other hand reached behind him and picked up one of his tomahawks and tapped the ball of thread with the wooden end of the knob.

The ball of thread unraveled at once and began weaving itself at an alarming pace as the Earth's protector employed his mystical powers to weave up a flying carpet out of just a ball of thread and jumped on top of it. Crossing his two tomahawks together while standing on top of the floating carpet, Upa bathed in a lightning bolt that crashed down from the cloudy sky and imbued both him and his floating carpet before turning to awed Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu.

"I will use this flying carpet to consult with Bulma on something, you seem to have matters well-handled here. It has been a while since a great battle has enveloped the entire Earth and most of us have not been training anywhere as intensely as we used to, check up on if anyone else needs some help," Upa suggested before taking off and blitzing all the way to West City in seemingly an instant.

"R-Right…" Tenshinhan nodded with his reserved façade being completely shattered by the awesome display of Kami's mystical powers before him.

* * *

"G-Goddamn Earthlings…" a grumbling yet weak voice of Tora failed to break through the wreckage he had been driven underneath of. His body felt broken in far too many placed for him to level all of the mountainous rubble he laid buried underneath but he still felt like he was strong enough to push a few boulders away and pull out another mechanical gizmo from his back.

"I told you lot… To not underestimate the Saiyans." Tora growled with a husky and crushed tone as he pressed a button on the side of the remote he had pulled out. Despite his hefty injuries, the Saiyan let out a barely audible chuckle. "You can only blame yourselves for letting your guards down…"

Far to the south, a round Saiyan attack pod rocketed upward, building up momentum even when sunken underneath layers on top of layers of the ocean. In mere seconds the pod emerged from the abyssal trenches and blasted toward the north. Given how the Saiyan pods possessed the speed necessary to traverse throughout the entire quadrant of the universe in a mere couple of years, covering half of a planet took no time at all.

Once it reached approximately the same continent as its owner that issued the signal on his remote, the pod opened up, exposing a prismatic signal piece inside that came installed in most Saiyan attack pods. The prismatic signal sent a focused beam of light, broadcasting the holographic image of an artificial moon in the sky. Summoning the last of his strength, Tora roared out from the bottom of his chest, unleashing a destructive explosive wave that cleared out the rubble so that he could take a gander at the broadcasting signal of the moon in the sky.

"Heh… You Earthling lot are about to go extinct…" Tora chuckled before wincing for his cracked ribs and wiped the blood off of his face before his only functional and non-swollen eye looked up at the sky to observe the signal of the moon.

"Bulma-san!" a curly-haired lady in a reception uniform burst forth inside the laboratory of the Capsule Corp building where the blue-haired inventor was tinkering on some handheld gadget while staring at the television set, desperate for more news on the Saiyan conflict as the moment when the news revealed the presence of the Saiyan invaders she would know that at least one of her friends had failed in defeating their enemy.

"Stockings-san? What is it?" Bulma wondered. The receptionist had never before bothered her or her father, she usually had things well-handled at the reception so the only times that the two would even meet were when Bulma entered or left the building during the woman's work hours.

"There's some weirdo hick that wants to see you! A real delinquent type!" the woman yelled out with a freaked-out expression as she pointed at the direction of the main entryway into the building.

"A hick? You mean Goku?" Bulma wondered, scratching her head. "Does he have a weird haircut and wears a martial arts uniform?"

"No! It's some fit hick with a braid and a loincloth! He rode in on a flying carpet and said that he wanted to see you!" the woman shook her fists as if she was complaining about an icky spider that someone needed to squash.

"Oh, you mean Upa!?" Bulma jumped up and rushed to the door. Having nothing better to do, Stockings followed, knowing that Bulma was headed toward her workplace anyway.

"Is he your friend? Is he perhaps your date now that you've dumped Yamcha-san? Oh, Bulma-san, I know it's not my place to question these sorts of things but I am telling you, I don't like this guy, don't like him one bit. In my experience, magic carpet rides are not a great basis for a functional relationship…" Stockings spoke up.

"No, you don't get it, Upa is the new Kami, he might know what's going on with the Saiyan invaders!" Bulma replied before jumping onto a scooter and taking off, leaving Stockings panting in the dust.

"Oh… All these delinquents coming in and out are making Bulma-san unruly… Don't ride the scooter indoors!" Stockings tried reaching the young woman but she was too far gone to hear and even if she could still hear Stockings' voice, she'd probably not even care to listen to what the woman had to say.

"Upa!" Bulma skid with her scooter and jumped off it just in time before she would have crashed into the Kami patiently waiting for the receptionist to fetch Bulma for him. "How is the fighting going?"

"Well… I haven't had the time to track it too closely but I haven't sensed any casualties and I've lost track of a few Saiyan signatures so it is going as good as it can, so far, at least. I've come to ask something…" Upa dismissed Bulma's worries.

"You know, I'm really getting all worried in here, I can't just sense all those fights happening all over the place so all I can do is watch the news at this point! I've tried sending out drones to film some key locations but by the time they'll reach them the fighting will probably be over…" Bulma groaned in frustration.

"Never mind that, Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu beat this Saiyan and he said a very interesting thing. I recall being asked by a whole bunch of people to remove Son Goku's tail, they said it was to prevent a disastrous transformation and that Saiyan was talking a whole lot about a transformation too, what is that all about?" Upa wondered.

"Oh? You didn't know? That's awfully irresponsible for a Kami!" Bulma pressed her knuckles to her waist. "When a Saiyan sees the full moon they transform into the Great Ape monster and cannot control themselves. Goku almost killed everyone multiple times when it happened but it appears that the transformation can be prevented by removing the Saiyan's tail. Even when the Saiyan is already in their Great Ape form you can revert them back by cutting off their tail or destroying the moon."

"Huh… So odd… It is indeed the full moon but it will be hours until the night falls yet the Saiyan spoke a bunch about his transformation and he used that interesting, flashy technique… I couldn't help but wonder if he meant to transform using it," Upa sighed.

"Hmmm… I mean… The concept of seeing the full moon in order to transform sounds an awful lot like some magic ritual so it must be based on some scientific concept. It is more than possible that the actual full moon is not necessary and that the transformation is triggered by the tidal force or the brightness of the full moon… Though Goku and Chayote have seen plenty of flashy stuff and they've never transformed from it, either way, the possibility shouldn't be dismissed." Bulma shrugged.

"Hmmm… So what you're saying is that full moon sounds too mystical and far-fetched… I see, thank you, Bulma. I must hurry back and warn the rest, Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu might be in grave danger right now if they do not dispose of the Saiyan they've defeated," Upa nodded while he leaped atop of his magical carpet and took off at space-time bending speeds that carried him all around the world in a split-instant.

"Y-Yes… A magical explanation is… A bit far-fetched…" Bulma scratched her temple, looking a bit stunned by the cosmic irony of just having seen Kami take off on a magical carpet mumbling under his nose about how mystical rituals causing drastic and feral transformations made no sense.

* * *

Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu turned toward a spiking Ki signature that appeared to overwhelm all of their senses at once. Just when they tried tracking the location of the nearest Dragon Team warrior, a literal mountain of wild Ki blinded both of them at once, forcing them to open their eyes and witness with their own two eyes what had caused this grim smokescreen of their spiritual senses.

A massive ape monster roared into the sky, pounding its chestplate which looked identical to the armor which the Saiyan wore while picking up entire mountains over its head and flinging them aside, causing untold tremors the likes of which Earth had not seen since the climactic battle with Piccolo Jr. seven years ago.

"What is that!?" Chiaotzu yelled out. "That Ki is crazy! We can't attack that thing, we'll be killed for sure!"

"Tsk…" Tenshinhan grunted, feeling cold sweat running down his forehead. "I'm not sure how but… It appears that the Saiyan we've beaten transformed into this giant ape monster. To think that his power could grow tenfold just like that… Even if he was someone we could deal with before, he truly is a monster now. If we don't stop him, the whole Earth is going to be history."

"Ten-san…" Chiaotzu turned to his friend. "Are you going to use it again? The Mafuba?"

"No way!" Tenshinhan swiped his arm aside in a dismissive gesture. "As a martial artist I cannot rest until I defeat this monster and winning that way again doesn't feel right. I know that this sounds like just a matter of pride and that it might seem foolish, Chiaotzu, but a true martial artist values his pride more than their life."

"Ten-san…" Chiaotzu objected.

"I know that this sounds crazy. That is why I won't be asking you to come with me. But I will fight this Great Ape monster and I will not rest until I stop it," Tenshinhan looked at his friend with an adamant look which he saw mirrored in Chiaotzu's own ecstatic eyes. The pair kicked off of the flat mountaintop the two of them rested on and took off toward the looming giant just hundreds of meters away from them engaging in a blind and mindless fit of destructive rage.


	111. The Warriors of Conviction

The gigantic ape in grey Saiyan battle armor that had expanded to fit the supersized form of the mountain-smashing titan despite its damaged state lifted whatever chunks of the mountain it had failed to smash over its head without as much as a snarl and tossed it kilometers across into another mountain range, reducing it to pebbles before pounding its chest again.

So much anger, so much fury and everything around it was so fragile, nothing concrete to vent it all out on. Everything that the goliath touched turned to dust and ashes and every roar made the fragile planet that hosted the savage titan crumble bit by bit.

"Barrage Dodonpa!" Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu yelled out in sync with one another, extending the fingers of their right hands and pointing them at the monstrous ape as a blinding barrage of bright beams erupted from them, smashing with their lethal might against the beast's exposed hide with quite a handful of them hitting it square in the back of the head.

"No way, it didn't even move!" Chiaotzu leaned back in surprise. Had the little ghoul-boy the capacity to go any paler – he'd have abused that ability to its limits at that moment as fear drained all blood from his veins.

"What ungodly strength!" Tenshinhan dragged his arm across his forehead in shock. All this training, all this hoping that he had become stronger than even Son Goku after training non-stop for seven years with an intensity that surpassed that of all of his peers and for it all to smash against an immovable rock like this…

Despite the initial impression, the Great Ape's eye twitched and it turned around to confront its attackers. Blood trickled from the beast's cracked face down over one of its eyes and from its nose and bubbled from its jaws but those injuries appeared to only make the beast wilder for the pain from the sum of all of its injuries only added to its infinite list of frustrations to fuel its world-shaking fury.

"Down!" Tenshinhan yelled out, grabbing Chiaotzu by his shoulder and diving down like his life depended on it. Judging from the titanic monstrosity opening up its mouth and unleashing a vicious beam of blue that erupted into an airborne firestorm just above their heads – that very much was the case.

"You used it…" Chiaotzu babbled looking at Tenshinhan and noticing his buff body obtaining slicker muscle tonus while chilly, white vapor streaked from Tenshinhan's pores.

"That's right, I don't see any other way of surviving this. One of us has to use it at all times," Tenshinhan confirmed it.

The three-eyed warrior was not one for names. Most of his techniques were named by the martial artists he had inherited them from. While he did know Hot-Red Mode and could effortlessly use it to power-up his techniques, it was Krillin who named them and first came to discover that branch of Ki manipulation. This method which Tenshinhan had tapped into was different entirely, whereas Hot-Red utilized arrogance and vanity, nothing else but absolute power, aggression and need to win, this current mode required one to feel at ease and emanate serene grace and control of the battle without the need to rush or defeat one's opponent.

"I'll use it," Chiaotzu looked at his friend. "It ends up reducing your combat potential and I'm weaker than you so I should use it."

"If you use it, it will be of no use to us. While his power is beyond any of our reaches, I am closer to it than you and because of that I could still manage to stay vigilant and aware of some of the beast's moves." Tenshinhan exchanged his thoughts with Chiaotzu telepathically while the Great Ape lifted its arms over its head and aimed to smash at the mountain where the two martial artists had landed.

It was impossible to see the hammer-arms of the titan smashing down, but from the immense rubble and thunderous collapse of the sky-reaching rock, Tenshinhan emerged with Chiaotzu in his arms, being able to somewhat follow the monster's movements in his chill method of Ki control. It's very essence laid in the ability to transcend the need for aggression and rely on the opponent defeating themselves, aiming to merely allow the opponent to tire themselves out or make a mistake, at the cost of a decent chunk of one's combat strength that one offered when sacrificing their aggression and offensive in battle.

The Great Ape looked up with a snarl, noticing the two pesky flies having escaped its clutches, feeling the absence of their crunchy bones underneath its herculean fists. The Great Ape opened its mouth and unleashed a burst of blue flames from it, Tenshinhan's three eyes snapped open, realizing that he'd be unable to avoid such a loose attack in time and would end up getting burnt. In an unexpected twist, however, the flames ended up taking a drastic plunge down, forming an over the top L shape before cleansing away the frost, ice, and snow from the mountain range that it showered.

"Chiaotzu, it was you, wasn't it?" Tenshinhan looked at his friend whom he still held in his clutches.

"Yep…" Chiaotzu nodded. His tiny, pale hands laid raised and open to where the flames would have consumed the pair. The ghastly martial artist had used his telekinesis to redirect the flames to another direction, with the flames being merely an elemental byproduct of Tora's Ki control, they were much easier to control than the beast itself or pure Ki attacks. Even still… Chiaotzu looked drained from redirecting the course of the flames even once.

Tenshinhan let Chiaotzu wriggle out from his grip. He raised his arms up and switched his method of Ki control from the cool white vapor emitted from his body to once more buffing out to the limit of his ability while veins continued to pop out wherever they found the chance to and evaporating sweat from his pores lit ablaze as his body was driven to the point of dehydration.

"If we mess around, we'll just end up dead! This is everything I have, Hot-Red Kikoho!" Tenshinhan roared out as he overtaxed his body a dozen times over and burnt out with a single, direct hit of a fiery beam that expanded as if passing through prisms upon prisms as it ended up massive enough to envelop the entire titanic calamity that had befallen Earth. The Kikoho, instead of gleaming in its usual bright glow of cultivated user's spirit, streamed with infernal heat of the hot-red, vain aggression pushing the body past its limits in the desire for nothing less but complete obliteration of the enemy, multiplying it even further by the drastic might of the Kikoho and fired all of his augmented spirit of need for brutality at the enemy at once.

Great Ape Tora reeled in pain, struggling to stay on his feet. Bit by bit he had raised his arms up and began pushing and swimming through the cannon of spirit flames before being overtaken by them completely and collapsing over the mountain range. Chiaotzu made it in time to recover from the tremendous heat pulsing at his face just being behind Tenshinhan when he fired that technique and catch his falling friend with telekinesis before letting him gently fall into the snow.

From their collective experience, water in any form was the best medicine against overuse of the Hot-Red Mode though Tenshinhan had never used the Hot-Red Kikoho before and therefore the full effects of this attempt to cheat fate remained unknown for now. They'd have ended up being lucky if the three-eyed martial artist could make a full recovery.

"That moon…" Chiaotzu looked up. "It wasn't meant to be dark yet, why is the full moon hanging over our heads so early in the evening?"

Before the gifted trickster could realize what the significance of the moon was, however, he trembled in the sight of the fallen and singed titan twitching in its slumber and its tail moving around while the Great Ape continued to growl and snarl, spouting out foams of blood-red from its jaws and showing off its impressive, floor-sized chompers.

"It's alive!" Chiaotzu freaked out and looked down at Tenshinhan who was completely out of it, his Ki that had burnt with the spirit of the entire planet's will to resist its extraterrestrial invaders had now gone out and his strength to fight had been extinguished like the flames he had just been burning up with. It was all up to him now, to protect his best friend, to protect the world, and to stop this calamity.

"Moon, begone!" Chiaotzu yelled out, pointing his finger up and beaming out a Dodonpa at the enigmatic moon that shined its rays over the battlefield though, in an odd twist, his beam had penetrated the holographic reflection and beamed off into the vast nothingness of space. "Huh…?" the gifted ghoul scratched his head in amazement.

The Great Ape stood back up in a struggle. A lot of its hair had either been singed off completely or remained in a pathetic, coal-black state and molten onto the flesh it had grown onto. Chiaotzu trembled in awe of the rising titan. If not even Tenshinhan's Hot-Red Kikoho could put it down, there may not have been a technique in the world that would have sufficed to cease the beast's rampage.

"That won't work!" Upa's voice reached Chiaotzu, forcing the telekinetic fighter to turn his head at the Kami who had rejoined the battle. "This moon is an illusionary projection but it beams with the light of the real full-moon. If you wish to destroy it, you need to destroy the ship projecting it."

"B-But there's no way we'll find it in this whole mountainous continent!" Chiaotzu gulped.

"That is true, though we must stop this monster regardless, if it gets careless, it'll blink out the whole Earth in an instant!" Upa clenched his fists in determination. He would not fail his planet and see it die in the first decade of his servitude as Kami. "If we could just… Restrain him somehow… I could cut off his tail,"

Chiaotzu turned his frightened face toward the growling beast which had been regaining all of its vicious incentive to maul, smash and obliterate. His frightened upward ellipses for eyes became curved as false courage to confront the beast originated in Chiaotzu's heart, bubbling up and drawing strength from his will to protect his best friend, the one who trained alongside him and believed in him when Tsuru Sennin would have considered him worthless and killed him off many times over during the early stages of his training.

"The Fist of Four Bodies!" Chiaotzu yelled out, crossing his arms in front of him and splitting into two versions of himself while both the original and the duplicate performed the same split again. With this impressive technique, Chiaotzu had formed true, physical doppelgangers instead of mere afterimages that most martial artists employed.

"Will this truly work? You're splitting your Ki in four with this technique, it will not make you any stronger…" Upa wondered but Chiaotzu soared onward like a speeding arrow, racing against the clock without letting the Great Ape recover.

"Solar Fist!" Chiaotzu's clone yelled out when the Great Ape appeared to come dangerously close to smashing one of them with a crushing blow, forcing the beast to reel backward blinded and dazed while the four Chiaotzu positioned themselves around all of the Great Ape's limbs and extended their arms and feet outward.

"Telekinesis!" they all shouted, emitting their immense telekinetic potential in visible, bright waves that enveloped each limb of the bellowing titan that the tiny martial artists have chosen, enclosing the beast in a wall of telekinetic waves focused solely upon a singular limb.

With Tenshinhan's Hot-Red Kikoho having done a remarkable number on the incomparable monster, with Chiaotzu gifting himself the ability to focus his prodigious mind on a single limb, even while his overall power remained crippled by his Fist of Four Bodies technique, Great Ape Tora roared and tried to wrestle out of Chiaotzu's control and he might have done so, given time, but Upa did not wait. He raised his tomahawk over his head and let a jolt of mystical lightning strike it and imbue it with divine energy before flinging it at the beast's tail.

The ax spun like a windmill, crackling with ecstatic thunder of the gods but the tail twitched and waggled out of its reach, given how Chiaotzu could only restrain both the beast's arms and legs, leaving the tail unattended.

"Oh no…" Chiaotzu freaked out, losing a tiny bit of control over the monster and having to dedicate every little bit of his strength in keeping the telekinetic hold going.

"As if!" Upa boldly taunted the beast and extended his arms, lightning still running up and down them and forming a network of electricity extending outward. Some part of Upa's mystical network must have still reached the ax for a single, low-pitched whistle filled the air and the tomahawk returned in the same trajectory, popping the tail off and returning to Upa's hand.

The Kami popped his weapon back to its place on his back while the bellowing beast shrunk down to human size and Tora's critically injured body plummeted into the abyss below. Chiaotzu's bodies all merged back into the original with the little ghoul floating off to check on Tenshinhan while Upa dashed and hopped over peaks of a few mountains to approach the fallen Earthling warrior as well.

"Tenshinhan…" Upa placed his hands over the unconscious warrior, allowing mystical lightning to strike down from above and imbue his hands with divine energy as he held them gleaming over the injured body of the fighter.

"Kami-sama…" Tenshinhan muttered in a weak tone, having regained a modicum of his strength. "What about the enemy?"

"We've won, with a little bit of combined effort," Upa nodded in reassurance.

"It's too bad. I wanted to tell the Saiyan that the third mistake he had made was underestimating you and Chiaotzu and the mystical powers at your possession…" Tenshinhan smirked.

Despite profound complications, the Earthlings had won this battlefield as well.

* * *

"Shugesh, Celipa… Come in, have you guys found Kakarot yet?" Leek wondered on the scouter as he had landed on a clearing in the plains and tried figuring out which battlefield he could have bolstered. While he was the weakest Saiyan in the group as he most of the time let Bardock do all the heavy hitting whenever the two ended up working on a mission together, he would have still provided some reinforcements to those that needed it.

After noticing a signal from Tora that called up the Attack Ball, Leek had settled down on the plains and tried figuring out what had been going on. His much faster and stronger peers had rushed off and had been taking on those alarming power levels on the planet all by themselves and Leek had no fight to pick by himself. Though the lack of reply from Shugesh's and Celipa's scouters as well as the disappearance of the signal from Tora's scouter alarmed him.

Could it have been that they were getting wiped out? It sometimes happened that a member of the team fell in battle but they usually looked up on such a chance as being healed up in the healing pod only bolstered one's power level significantly. In fact, it was because of the fact that he had spent years upon years of working his buttocks off in grueling missions whereas King Vegeta played his cheek-kissing political games in Planet Vegeta that Bardock believed himself capable of overthrowing the king in the first place.

But the whole squad? No, that was impossible, while the power levels of the enemy were high, sometimes higher than those of the squad members hurrying on to confront them, they still had their Great Ape forms in reserve and could have used them at any time, right? There were ample times when aliens had overwhelmed them, only to be crushed underneath the boots of Great Apes like the maggots they were.

There was no point in Leek worrying, there could have been no chance for the Earthlings to win. Leek's scouter turned on and began counting up. The Saiyan turned behind him, seeing a figure emerge from the other side of the plains and hurrying across the hills in a floating vehicle that seemed to utilize some sort of electromagnetic mechanism to float above ground and surf those hills as if they were waves of the ocean.

"A power level of 2100!?" Leek paled out. "Where did this goliath come from, he wasn't even in our original scan of the planet!"

The hovercar halted, tilting its behind while its nose took an uncomfortable and almost cartoonish bend forward, bending out the entire corpus of the car like a twig. A chubby man with long, spiky, dark hair and a sleeveless, brown yukata jumped out from it.

"Say, ya wouldn't know anythin' 'bout no West City, would ya?" the sword-carrying bruiser scratched the back of his head, looking at the petrified Saiyan. "I'm tryin' ta collect the Dragon Balls in case some of dem guys get killed or else Korin ain't feedin' me anymore but I need Bulma's help on dat an' she's in West City, some place called Capsule Corp… You look like some city guy, all shiny an' neat…"

"N-No… Sorry, I'm not from around here… Those Dragon Balls, what would those be? Perhaps I might be able to help you look for them?" Leek chuckled without being able to shake off the feeling of overwhelming dread inside him. When confronted by someone stronger than him, all fighting spirit just seemed to leave him. There wasn't that much of a difference between him and this brawler but… Then why were his teammates all disappearing left and right?

"Nah, you wouldn' be able ta find 'em without the Dragon Radar… Guess wish-fulfilling orbs gotta be hard 'ta find, right, though, given that Kami's da one ta make 'em, how come he can't snap his fingers an' just make 'em happen, ya know?" Yajirobe scratched his head, throwing handfuls of dandruff and dead hair flying with each scratch while he grumbled in unrest. "Well, sorry 'ta bother you, Mr. I guess I'm off to look for 'dem balls, right?"

"Ummm… Sure…" Leek nodded, smiling with a shaky grin that was his attempt to act polite. The sword-wielding bruiser jumped back into his hovercar and started it while Leek hurried past it and tried to get away from it with a hasty step.

All went black for a second, then searing pain in his back and taste of blood in his mouth. The vision turned shaky and began floating around, single figures changed into triplets and then molded back together while things were beginning to turn dim. Sharp pain in the shape of a back-sized gash that sprayed warm blood all over his body persevered to remind Leek that he was still alive.

"Ya think I can't sense yer crazy strong for a city slicker? Yer a Saiyan, ain'tcha? What with da tail and all… Jeez though, yer pretty strong, I could sense dat I'd have some trouble with ya, figured I'd take ya out from behind and spare the trouble…" the sword-wielding Earthling grumbled, leaning over twitching and writhing in pain body of Leek before jumping back into his hovercar and speeding off.

Someone had to know, if his squad was to get obliterated and if they were to get wiped, someone needed to know, that much was protocol. A planet dangerous enough to wipe out Bardock's squad would have been of some interest, in addition, manpower could have been saved by not wasting time with weak fodder sent to colonize an inhospitable rock producing such monstrous locals.

"P-Please… If anyone's listening… My name is Leek from Bardock's squad… We're getting massacred down here on Earth, come in… Does anyone hear me?" Leek sent out a transmission for reinforcements out. Given their remote location, it would have been years until someone would have picked up but Leek felt his final moments creeping up and thus he was getting desperate.

"Yeah… We hear you alright, low-class trash…" a rocking and arrogant tone filled Leek's ears before his fading consciousness took him away and prevented him from taking in all of the implications from his signal reaching him, of all people.


	112. Family Values

A little boy sat beside his window. The bright sunshine beamed through and illuminated a pile of papers in front of him although this physical illumination did not make the contents of the pages any less confusing. In moments of bafflement, while he scratched his head with the other end of his pencil, the six-year-old found his eyes wandering and focusing on the image of his father throwing punches and kicks outside, striking at thin air.

His father had been going at it for a while, as seen in the sweat building up on his face. Just watching his father stretching his limbs in the outdoors made the little boy sweat too, he dragged the yellow sleeve of his oriental top over his forehead. An answer to the math problem he was solving came to him and thus Goku's son focused on filling up the page in front of him.

He'd better fill every page up, grandpa did venture out into the town to pick these up for him after all. They probably cost a whole lot of money. Plus, mother really wanted him to do good at everything. Sometimes she was even stricter than father when he taught him martial arts. It was mother, most of the time, pointing out flaws in stance or mistakes that he had made while considering his strategy. Father acted so laxly that it might have seemed like he didn't care. He did, in fact, fighting was the one thing he cared immensely about and the boy liked connecting with his father doing the thing that made father open up and be himself.

Another confusing math problem…

The boy of shoulder-length, spiky black hair lifted his head up to look at his father training while he figured out the answer in his head, recalled which formula came first and the priorities of operations. Something was wrong, the little boy was just six-years-old but even he could know that much. Father was just standing there, perfectly straight, watching up and in the distance, as if trying to see something far off in the distance.

"Gohan-chan!" the doors burst open, mother rushed in and approached little Gohan's desk. "Stay indoors, don't look through the curtains. You're still studying? Good, just keep doing that. Focus really hard on your studies. A boy needs to be both smart and strong so keep grinding those books as hard as your father's working out, okay?"

"Is something wrong?" Gohan looked up in a troubled voice. At his early age it was tough to be emotional and not sound a little bit whiny though little Gohan didn't feel like crying. It was just that his blood was pumping and something was bugging his gut. It felt a lot like the times father took him flying and teased him by blitzing dangerously close to mountains or dinosaurs that roared really loud after being startled.

"Don't worry, Gohan-chan. Your daddy and mommy are really strong and they'll protect you. We kicked the demons back to their realm that one time, you know. Daddy will oversee your training today. We'll postpone it a bit further in the evening, maybe after dinner," Chi-Chi gave her son a smile of encouragement before rushing off. Almost immediately after she ran off, Gohan tilted his head to stare at the closed blinders.

Mother said not to worry and not to look. Gohan always did as his mother said, he'd have done as father said too but father didn't really tell him to do all that much. He just kind of watched Gohan and went with the flow. It was much tougher understanding father than it was his mother. Gohan's pinky reached out and slipped in between two pieces of the blinders, with a light turn of the finger there was a tiny opening through which some light went in.

She told Gohan to study but how could he study with the blinders all closed? He needed to open them up just a little bit, at least…

"What is that? It can't be Piccolo…" Chi-Chi rushed out to the yard to join her husband in tracking the large Ki signature rushing at them at incredible speed.

"Don't know, it's nobody we've met. It ain't Piccolo, it could be Chayote if she's suppressing herself but that sort of thing ain't her style…" Goku replied with a serious expression. He didn't like what he felt one bit.

"Well, whoever it is, they're gonna get it!" Chi-Chi punched her open palm and grit her teeth. "We've got a good thing going here and we're doing a great job at running a family. If someone wants to wreck that, they're going to be leaving all sore and battered!"

"I don't know, Chi-Chi, I'm a little bit excited about this new challenge. I feel like we haven't been training as hard as we could have these past years. Training for training's own sake just ain't the same, you know…" Goku stretched out his arms and neck before returning onto the adamant focus on the incoming threat that soon appeared far off into the horizon. It took the airborne giant a good couple of seconds to close the distance completely and float up in the air over the family.

"What is that?" Chi-Chi wondered. Her voice shook but her tone was that of surprise. The man that aimed to disturb the peaceful Son family life was a physical titan, almost twice her size with a blocky head that had a handful of straight scars streaking over his face and he didn't have all that much hair left on his head either. Had it not been for his otherworldly armor and gear, he'd have looked like some caveman blockhead. "That tail…"

Goku noticed the fact that the man wore his tail wrapped over his waist, just like Raditz did a bit after his wife did. He didn't pay that detail much mind before but now that Chi-Chi noticed it, the elements all sort of added up. The incredible Ki, the extraterrestrial armor, and the tail.

"Kakarot…" the man grumbled in a husky but booming voice. "Found you!"

"You're a Saiyan, aren't you?" Goku fixed his wristbands and flexed his shoulders, seeing the way this guy was put together, and, knowing his upbringing, the Saiyan raised on Earth prepared for a brawl.

"Follow me," the giant muttered, had it not been for his oversized chest and the brutish strength of his lungs, his grunts would have been utterly unintelligible but they sounded a lot more coherent now. "Your father wants to see you."

"My father…!?" Goku blanked out in shock. "Did you say my father?"

"Listen, you blockhead, Goku-sa isn't going anywhere. If his father wants to come to visit, we'll host him. I'm making dinner in a few hours. Knowing Goku's appetite, feeding him, his father and a big fella like you will put a strain on our supplies but sitting by the table and eating together is something families do," Chi-Chi yelled at the large man who appeared greatly confused by both her presence as well as the state of the planet.

"Ugh… What is going on?" the blockhead ground his teeth as he placed both of his hands over his head and yanked on his two spiking patches of hair growing on both sides of it. "Kakarot isn't the most powerful power level on this planet, the planet ain't wiped out, some Earthling broad is hassling me…!"

"Chi-Chi is right. I'm not some Kakareek or whatever you guys call me. My name's Son Goku and I'm a Saiyan raised on Earth. I've got a family now and if my old man's really come down to Earth I'd like to meet him but I ain't leaving Earth behind." Goku objected, appearing troubled by how upset the Saiyan giant was getting.

Without a warning, the brutish Saiyan began flickering at hi-speeds up in the air, running circles around Son Goku, Chi-Chi, and their family home. Goku's eyes followed the Saiyan's movements, letting him go only when he moved to a blindspot behind him but even then his Ki sensory allowed him to stay in track of his opponent.

"Yaaagh!" the supersized Saiyan roared out as he began thrusting his palms forward, firing off a barrage of Ki blasts at everything in his sight. The flat objection to his limited understanding that Son Goku was issuing, this Earthling woman, this supposed family home, they were all causing him a massive headache so they all had to be reduced to ashes so that his head would stop hurting already.

Goku moved in an instant, he dashed in before the rush of Ki blasts and deflected every single one of them with relative ease, focusing on the attack and ensuring that it didn't threaten his home. The stray Ki blasts flew off into the distance and detonated far-off. A few of them might have gone as far as Aru Village but Goku had little control over where he deflected the blasts. His entire focus was on protecting his family home.

"You bastard!" he howled. "My son's in there!"

"Son?" the almost-bald Saiyan scratched the bald part of his head, rubbing off some layers of dry, dead skin off of the scarred area of his face that way. "Son is good, more Saiyans…"

"As if we're going to help you now that you attacked us!" Goku clenched his fist out in front of him. "I'm sending you flying back to where you came from, you hear me!?"

The aura of the furious warrior unfurled in a wild burst. In a blink, Goku appeared right before his opponent and spread his arms out, unleashing a powerful bubble of Kiai that overwhelmed the giant and sent him flying upward. Like a heavens-piercing arrow, Goku dashed after him and elbowed the Saiyan right in the gut before kicking him even higher up until the Saiyan flipped back over the clouds and somehow managed to wriggle into a stable position.

Reeling and panting, wiping blood and slobber off of his face, the humiliated Saiyan turned on his scouter. The son of Bardock had only moved a couple of times this entire brawl and yet Borgos had failed to track him each and every time. He forgot to measure up Kakarot's power level but he was never meant to hit him in the first place. Kakarot's was supposed to be the top power level on this planet bar none. Bardock went after the strongest one…

"17 065!?" Borgos growled. "The brat is almost as strong as Bardock…"

Goku and Chi-Chi erupted from the clouds together, rushing after the Saiyan and overwhelming him both at once. The brutish physical titan flew back to put some more space between him and the husband-wife team that came at him but they were too fast and didn't give him much leeway. That little pest Kakarot called his wife didn't hit nearly as hard as he did but she still threw him off-guard and even the tiniest flinch opened Borgos up for a beatdown from Bardock's brat.

"Up here you don't have to hold back, Goku-sa," Chi-Chi glanced at her husband after the two delivered a combination flying kick to Borgos' face and sent the giant flying back and crashing down to Mount Paozu down below. Despite falling through the clouds and crashing down, neither one of the pair lost the track of their opponent. The fact that the enemy didn't know how to suppress his Ki only served to bite him in the behind by making him a constantly glowing beacon.

"He's doing something!" Goku tightened his focus and dived down to land right before his opponent. The Earth-raised Saiyan aimed to cut the brute's path in rushing back to the Son family home and he did just that, though it didn't look like the brutish Saiyan was still looking to obliterate Goku's home.

"Grrr… If you won't come, I'll have to bring you to your old man battered and unconscious!" Borgos yelled out, spreading his arms to the side and opening his jaw. "Angry Launcher!"

A bright mouth-beam with enough power to shake the ground beneath the feet and make the surrounding mountains crumble and the nearby waterfalls to flood the area now that there were no more rocky formations shutting them off careened off toward Goku. Chi-Chi joined in beside her husband while the two extended their palm outward and formed a Kiai push that served as a barrier to prevent the mouth beam from causing any unwanted damage by absorbing most of its force and detonating him before the two.

"Dammit, even the Earthling's got a power level of 1108…" Borgos bellowed before turning his scouter toward the Son family home. "Hmph… His son's just a twerp, we can probably make do without someone with a measly power level of 384…"

"Haven't you gotten the hint yet?!" Goku yelled out at the Saiyan invader. "You can't beat us so get out of this planet already! If my father's siding with bastards like you, I'm gonna kick his ass and knock him flat too if he shows up!"

"Heh… You can tell that right to his face, Kakarot, right after we both smash your little, sad family to pieces like the Great Apes…" Borgos smirked with a smile that was missing a few teeth. The wear and tear that this pathetic union between a Saiyan and an Earthling put on him was just perfect, just the kind of thing that Borgos needed before joining Bardock in his coup on Planet Vegeta. The Saiyan extended his right arm to the side and formed a bright and crackling sphere in it.

Borgos' eyes widened as he could no longer see Kakarot in front of him. The giant's attention faltered and shifted to his hand, which no longer fostered the gleaming power ball. It was then that fragments of Goku's spiky hair settling back in their usual position stood out and forced the giant to look down. The pain was very slow to set in but Borgos' vision faded out at almost the same time as he felt Goku's elbow hitting him right in the solar plexus, effectively turning him off.

A fiery aura was bursting forth from Goku's pores and caressing his hair as it flowed as if affected by perpetual weightlessness. The body of the Earth-raised Saiyan had buffed up and caused him significant strain as he staggered back from the enemy he had just knocked out and observed as Borgos collapsed on the ground. The giant's eyes were whited out and his Ki signature had reduced to a meaningless, barely simmering spark.

"Goku-sa…" Chi-Chi ran up to Goku as the Saiyan warrior rushed to turn off his Hot-Red mode which he tapped into out of some primal fear born in his gut of what was about to happen. "You used it… Let's go home, I'll fix you up something to eat and get you something nice to drink up and replenish your fluids."

"Yeah… I don't know what got over me, I can't explain it but… It just felt like… Like I had to come at him with my full power, soar as high up as I could, or else something terrible might have happened," Goku looked at his trembling hands and felt so much of his remaining strength burning away. He hadn't fought seriously for seven years, only engaging in image training and some moderate, daily workout sessions which had left his body completely devoid of the memories of what it felt like to fight like going to war. Just one, light spark of Hot-Red had nearly broken Goku's body altogether though the enemy laid beaten.

Chi-Chi walked up to the lying behemoth with a furious glare in her eyes. Goku turned back at her, he felt confused about what he saw and the full fighting intent still burning up in his wife. The realization of what she meant to do didn't hit him all at once, it came in fragments. Chi-Chi really loved this family life stuff. She struggled with it at times but she reveled in learning to cook better and teaching Gohan both martial arts and science just as much as Goku loved his training. It meant everything to her to have the family life that she always wanted to have and this man threatened all of it.

"Chi-Chi, he's already done. Let's go home, I'm starving!" he called out to her while his wife's fists trembled pressed to her thighs, she clutched at her dress, leaving nasty wrinkles in the cloth.

"He's going to come after us again when he wakes up," she cried out.

"He won't, he's in no condition to fight. He'll have to find a place to recover his strength before he can come after us again," Goku waved his hand in dismissal. "By that time we'll have gotten even stronger, we'll just stop him again,"

"And when he'll recover he'll grow stronger too, he's a Saiyan – just like you, just like Gohan-chan. Didn't you see what he tried to do, what he wanted to do before you knocked him out? He wanted you to destroy everything and leave it behind, to go off to space like Chayote!" Chi-Chi turned her ire back and focused it all on Goku.

"Come on, Chi-Chi, you know I'd never do that. That's just a sign that we can't let up on our training, that's all. We can still be a family, just like you always wanted, it's just that we aren't a normal family," Goku shrugged.

"Don't you think I know that?" Chi-Chi cried out, throwing her arms up and down in a fit, "That's all I used to want – a normal family just like everyone else's. It's just that… At some point, after being married by Kami himself, after having to fight an invasion of demons just to protect the peaceful family life, I've come to realize that we'll never have that and… I was okay with that. But now… Seeing this kind of thing happen, it's like… All the fighting is closing in on what little normalcy we've established."

"Chi-Chi…" Goku approached and hugged his wife before pulling her away and holding her arms so that he could look right down at her and she could see and hear him too. "It's been seven years since we last had to protect the Earth. Didn't you have a feeling that we'd need to do that eventually? Be it Piccolo or the Saiyans or whatever…"

Before the two could finish talking, they heard a cry of a familiar voice in the distance. Goku let go of Chi-Chi only for the woman to walk up from his side and look up into the distance and see a familiar quartet closing in. Krillin, Yamcha, and Muten Roshi landed nearby with Puar floating beside Yamcha's shoulder. The three ran up and greeted Goku and Chi-Chi.

"Goku, it's been years! Where were you, Bulma couldn't reach you! We wanted to tell you about the Saiyans but everyone's been so busy, I guess even Upa didn't tell you," Krillin rubbed the back of his head before noticing the unconscious Saiyan behind his friends. "I see you beat up your Saiyan too… He didn't make it then, he didn't turn into a Great Ape,"

"No, but there are still wild clashes all over the planet…" Goku turned to the north with a grim look. "I can sense Piccolo's power level taking some serious dips, he might be in trouble. I hate to admit it but… He's the strongest out of us all right now. We need to help him out."

"Yeah, he might be our best chance at fending these Saiyans off," Yamcha turned to the north-west where Piccolo's power level was struggling against something of similar size to his own. Another Saiyan, no doubt, and the strongest one yet.

"Chi-Chi, I hate to ask you of this but…" Muten Roshi looked up at Chi-Chi.

"Go, Goku-sa. I'll go back home and comfort Gohan-chan, make sure that no one tries to wreck our house again. Someone has to watch him and I won't be able to keep up with those guys anyway," Chi-Chi nodded and gave Goku a stern look. She didn't scold him for what he had to do, just made sure to make him swear to her without speaking anything out loud that he'd do what needed to be done. Make sure that his family was safe over everything else.

There was not a hint of gloom in Goku's face, he nodded with a goofy smirk of excitement before taking off alongside Yamcha and Krillin. The three were gone in a blink. Chi-Chi turned to the martial arts veteran and blinked a couple of times with a blank expression.

"I can't keep up either. Not the martial arts part, I'm just not the flier I used to be, I guess…" Muten Roshi sighed. "Unlike you, I can't just take my training more seriously, my old bones just ain't what they used to be…" the old man cracked his back with a few stretches before acting out like he was in pain, looking for comfort so that he could slip in a careless slap at Chi-Chi's breasts or two but the woman, whether because she saw him through, or because she was otherwise occupied, just took off to the west.

"Wait up! I want to meet this little Gohan!" Muten Roshi yelled out and raced after the worried mother.


	113. Whoever Wins, the Earth Loses

Piccolo sulked atop of a giant glacial platform that he had come to call home. He had been quite receptive to both tropical and desert conditions, rendering training in most wastelands rather useless. The bone-freezing glaciers of the northern regions that expanded as a jagged, sky-reaching massive as a cap of the entire world was the only place challenging enough to consider a worthy training ground.

At this point, with seven years having passed since his defeat, sometimes he came to wonder as to why he doesn't attack again. Having once fought against Goku he had remembered the sense of the man's Ki and he could feel him at all times, even on the other side of the world. He had been keeping up with his training though he wasn't training for something concrete, he lacked a drive that Piccolo had and Goku's training had been lax.

It didn't even take a full year for Piccolo to surpass that which he felt of Goku. He had trained for a year more just because he knew the type of a crafty martial artist he was dealing with. Even last time Piccolo had Goku beat in terms of strength, speed, and toughness. It was skill and experience that got in his way, Goku had been alive for six times the amount of time that Piccolo's been alive and he had years of training and martial arts experience ahead of him.

He had none of the spite, none of Piccolo's accursed hate for the man, however, he had never spent every waking hour of his day hating someone so much that one could have sworn the universe itself would have opened up a hole in the sky and swallowed that person away just from the sheer hate that his enemy exhumed. And yet...

Years upon years had passed, Piccolo had grown vastly stronger than his rival and deepened the gap between them from the last time to the point where he'd be able to stand his own even against Son Goku's Hot-Red Mode, he was sure of it. Despite that, despite Son Goku being in his hand's reach, he never struck at him again. It's almost like... Like he was afraid or felt indebted to the fool for keeping him alive somewhat...

"Hell no!" Piccolo roared out, spreading his arms out and unleashing all of his Ki, trying to exhaust himself to relieve some tension. "I'm not indebted to that buffoon, if anything, I've come to hate him even more! I, the reincarnation of Demon King Piccolo reduced to ruin before him, driven to a condition where I had to rely on the mercy of my mortal enemy! I'll destroy you, I'll obliterate you and everything you know and hold dear, Son Goku!"

The glacier collapsed from the force of Piccolo's yell alone, as hefty ice masses splashed into the freezing water and raised mountainous waves that splashed and sprayed their refreshing sputters all over Piccolo without the reincarnated Demon King even flinching once from it. All that Piccolo was left with was the knowledge that this was yet another time he swore bloody murder but did nothing about it.

"It's his friends, that's right…" Piccolo looked at his clenched fist, oozing with strength yet refusing to plunge the beating heart right out of Son Goku's chest regardless, rendering it as useless as the fist of a weakling. "I am still too weak to take on them all. That other Saiyan woman, she might as well be as strong as Goku if not stronger. I haven't sensed her at all since the tournament though, who knows where she's been… Some of his friends had grown quite strong too. Yes…"

That was just an excuse and Piccolo knew it. The fist that once served as a blade that stamped the right to declare the entire world his now dropped by Piccolo's side. With an ethereal noise of shattered glass and a sudden fight or flight instinct blowing up like a landmine inside Piccolo's chest, his vigor and passion for murder returned. The reborn Demon King turned for a blank point behind him, sensing nothing less than looming dread. A Ki signature that didn't feel evil nor did it feel good but it was brutality incarnate all the same. The size of the signature felt absolutely horrifying, no matter the content of its essence.

"What's the meaning of this!?" Piccolo's jaw froze in an open position while his eyes felt like they'd bulge out at any moment now.

"Huh… A Namekian on Earth? Odd…" the master of the unnaturally high Ki signature proclaimed while pressing a button on the device he wore over his right eye. "Battle Power of 29 060?! Hmph… Then again, of course, a Namekian would provide Kakarot with difficulties. Spill the beans, what are you doing here? I've heard that Namekians were once a space-faring race but they've not been heard from for many years."

"You talk first, why do you look like exactly like Son Goku but your Ki feels completely different?" Piccolo took an aggressive stance.

"Oh? You recognize me then, Namekian? In that case, perhaps you have met my son, Kakarot?" the invader of dark, spiky hair matching the hairstyle of Son Goku and a scar on his cheek wondered, looking chipper and excited about Piccolo's threats.

This utter dismissal of the absolute death stalking behind Piccolo was infuriating. He spoke about someone similar to him being his son and Piccolo would have had little trouble buying that this bastard here was Son Goku's old man, given how the only person to look this overjoyed about being challenged by the reincarnated Demon King was the very same young man whom this assailant resembled.

"So, you're Son Goku's old man, huh? Well, well… That fool killed my own predecessor, I look forward to returning the favor. Maybe I'll fling what's left of you at his feet just to see him suffer more when I end up killing him," Piccolo smirked, transitioning into his fighting stance.

"So, then you haven't killed Kakarot yet, despite being the most powerful being on this planet. And my boy has managed to piss you off somewhat, I see. A natural rebel, a chip off the old block, it seems. Good, we'll need plenty of that in the future…" the tailed warrior replied by taking a wide. "Let's do this, Namekian, my fists are itching!"

"It's your funeral you're rushing to!" Piccolo growled and leaped into the air, charging at his opponent with an aerial divekick. His opponent had vanished, resulting in Piccolo slicing the glacial platform he stood on clean off with his kick while the Namekian turned his attention to the skies, having followed his opponent's movements through.

With his crystal-clear aura burning up, the enemy swooped down in a reversed arc and extended his arm out, releasing a malformed expulsion of Ki that couldn't have been called a Ki blast. It served as a neat distraction, Piccolo had to admit that when his opponent swept at his legs and sent the reincarnated Demon King spinning in mid-air before his tailed opponent stopped him with a stalwart push kick to the chest and transitioned perfectly into an airborne spinning flurry of kicks.

It had been a while since Piccolo had felt the taste of his own blood in his mouth. The fist of his attacker had almost punched right through him before a high-kick sent Piccolo flying up into the air seeing how the rampant shockwaves had reduced the platform the two were fighting on to frosty rubble. The enemy hit hard, so hard that Piccolo still couldn't recover in time to defend from his continued, relentless onslaught of strikes in mid-air and, before he knew it, his enemy was gone.

Piccolo knew that the Saiyan was behind him but the crushing blow of a double-arm ax handle slam to the back of his head that sent him deep down under and made all black out right before the plunge came before the Namekian could face his opponent the way he deserved to be faced.

"Heh, you're not half bad, I'll give you that. You'd give those Earthlings a run for their money perhaps, but I am a whole different thing entirely…" Piccolo emerged from underwater, dragging his knuckles across his lower face to wipe the few trickles of blood that the enemy had drawn from his cracked lip.

"Dammit, I figured you'd be a problem from how tough you felt to punch…" the airborne Saiyan clutched his wrist and tightened the red wristband that he wore over it with a smirk on his face. "Your power level is insane, though I'm yet to see what you can do with it."

The two rushed toward one another, throwing fists and kicks and clashing against one another. After the first two exchanges, the Saiyan began backing out of the clash though Piccolo offered little quarter. The reincarnated Demon King attempted to surprise his enemy with his unnatural physiology by expanding his arm to grab the enemy from behind but the tailed warrior leaned to the side and avoided the grab as if he had known it to be coming.

"I've fought your kind before, Namekian, you're not surprising me with any of your tricks, you know…" the scarred Saiyan mocked the naivete of Piccolo before swinging and releasing him into the air. The Saiyan saw this as his own chance to attack and thus he laid a siege on Piccolo's defenses though the Namekian didn't struggle too much about avoiding or blocking his opponent's attacks. The moment Piccolo even thought about counterattacking, however, his opponent vanished and reappeared a bit further away with a concentrated Ki blast gleaming in his right hand.

"Eat this!" he roared out and flung it. The Ki blast carried much more skill in how it was put together compared to the last one that had a different purpose – just to raise some dust and some ruckus and distract Piccolo. The Saiyan roared once more as he charged through the explosive detonation of his own Ki blast and rammed at Piccolo with a powerful tackle, sending the Namekian flying back. Just when Piccolo recovered, he saw a different, azure gleam swelling up in the enemy's hand.

"Spirit Cannon!" the scarred warrior yelled out and flung the real Ki blast he had been setting up for this whole time. The serious Ki blast erupted in a mirage of flames and smoke though the warrior appeared to be more focused on the sudden activation of the device on his face rather than the impressive destruction he had caused on the northern hemisphere of the planet.

"Was that you trying to kill me?" Piccolo taunted his opponent, letting the smoke and spraying showers of water from the roaring whirlpools below wash the tension of battle off of him with its current. The Namekian floated with his arms placed in a cross-shaped blocking position and appeared to be not at all affected by the explosion. "How about I show you the power that will subjugate the Earth one day?"

Piccolo taunted his opponent by dropping his stance altogether and cracking his neck a couple of times with a careless smirk. His attack was instantaneous, the Namekian had vanished though his kick connected to the jaw of Goku's father in a blink, crushing all of the warrior's resistance and whiting him out in a snap. Once the force of inertia recalled its purpose, the tailed warrior blasted off a great distance only to be stopped and pulled back in by his Namekian opponent grabbing his head with his elongated arm.

A pair of mocking kicks at the Saiyan's knees to torment him. A knee to his face to break him further, a rising knee to send him flying again. Piccolo vanished to follow after his airborne opponent, throwing swipes at him that were entirely driven by madness. Everything he wanted to tell and do to Son Goku but couldn't, for whatever reason, this invader would become his scapegoat. He would suffer in all the ways Goku had to but didn't yet.

A palm strike that cracked through the black and green armor that the enemy wore and send him crashing down, only for Piccolo to outrace his opponent to the surface of the water and lash at the Saiyan with his prolonged limb like a whip to confuse the kinetic forces wreaking havoc on the Saiyan's skeletal structure even more. Piccolo spread his arms aside, forming a golden explosive wave and the music of the enemy's scream of pain fueled his might as it was always meant to.

His voice… Even his voice sounded almost the same, had it not been for a more cool and reserved tone and manner of speaking. This indescribable swagger and aura of cool that Piccolo very much intended to smash. His enemy floated on the surface of the water with his eyes whited out, battered, and seemingly broken.

"You can't die, not yet, come on, your son could take way more punishment than this. Don't embarrass him by dying so soon," Piccolo taunted his enemy while cracking his knuckles. He could have kept punishing him, kept breaking the father of his nemesis until there was nothing but the dust of his bones left to blow and scatter over the waves of the ocean of the polar region. That was not how Piccolo wanted it. He wanted that man to think he had a shot, he wanted to see hope leave his eyes just like he wanted to see everything Goku held dead broken and reduced to rubble before he struck the finishing blow.

"Dying…?" the scarred warrior cackled. "Is that how you think I got those scars?"

"Well, I guess I was right to assume you and your spawn have this annoying feature in common…" Piccolo breathed out everything he had built up at once and prepared for another attack.

The reborn Demon King flicked his finger, a tiny spark lit up on the very edge of his claw, striking the Saiyan with some invisible and searing heat that shattered most of the armor covering his upper body and sent a wild gush of blood flowing from the wound. Even with his chest cavity cracked open and blood rushing from his mouth, this berserker seemed to be cackling like he was enjoying it. Not even demons born and bred for warfare were this mad…

"This feels wrong. As the lone survivor and king of the Evil Tribe, I should be marveling at this blood and massacre but you make it look like you're enjoying it. I am not here to provide you with entertainment, you know…" Piccolo appeared to join in on the Saiyan's joyous mood with a cackle of his own. "Something baffles me though, how come you fold and break so easily? You said something about knowing by "Battle Power" and yet you still confronted me. That means you believe yourself stronger than me, right? That doesn't make much sense, given the predicament you're in…"

"Stronger…?" Bardock smirked, his eyes betrayed the pain he was in though his mouth couldn't stop mocking the reincarnation of the Demon King with his smiling. "My own Battle Power is 18 000. I am well aware of the troublesome brawl I'm in, Namekian."

"W-What? Then why…?" Piccolo had sensed a surge of dread for the first time since picking up this unnaturally high Ki signature all the way off in the distance. "Is this some sort of distraction? Is Son Goku coming to save you while you're wearing me out with this pathetic attempt at my life? Are the two of you teaming up on me? I must say, it doesn't sound much like Son to me."

"Teaming up?" Bardock spat blood to the side and clenched his fist like he was offended or something. "No, this fight's all mine. If you must hear my reason for fighting you, it's because I crave the strength I'll get from this challenge. Every time a Saiyan gets injured in a fight they grow stronger, hell, some genetic freaks even continue to evolve all throughout a tough battle. I had always hoped for a decent challenge though I never thought that I'd get to punch a Namekian in the face. A tough battle like that will make me grow stronger than I anticipated even in my best-case scenarios."

"Heh… Just like your dumbass of a son, you've got a massive hole in your plan – to grow stronger you must survive the fight and I very much intend to sever your head clean off once I'm done breaking you," Piccolo mocked his opponent, preparing to bully him even further.

With a charging rush, Piccolo thrust his fist into the gut of his opponent, driving all air out from his already drowning in blood lungs before kicking him low into the side of his busted knees and throwing the enemy off-balance before elbowing him right in the face again. A flurry of stiff punches left the tailed warrior gurgling and grunting before Piccolo reached out for him again with his elongated arm, using them to claw at the enemy while he whipped them around like knives on a chain.

In his enemy's reeling, Piccolo found his opportunity to blast him away. "Get gone, Explosive Demon Wave!"

Piccolo had fully intended to never see Goku's father ever again after this attack, he didn't put all of his strength into it as it was meant to maim and reduce to rubble but while Saiyans were tougher than humans, they were still fragile beings, especially when they were so insignificant compared to Piccolo himself. It was only when an irritating, electrical hum met Piccolo's sensitive ears that he first started to cope with the shocker that his enemy wasn't just surviving, the scarred warrior was resisting the beating he was taking despite being hopelessly outmatched… Was he though?

What was this sudden burst of power that Piccolo was sensing? Did the Saiyan's strength just grow all of a sudden? The Saiyan's Ki had grown well past even his full power when the two had started their match. Right now, even in his injured state, the enemy was equal to Piccolo's full power.

"W-What's the meaning of this?" Piccolo demanded an answer from the Saiyan the defied all odds and logic to power through his attack and was staring at the Namekian like he was the last obstacle of a hungry man to reach a vendor. Though this particular being wasn't hungry for food, his was a craving for hardcore violence. "How can you grow in power in such a wounded state?"

"Grow in power? Don't be ridiculous. It's just that… Shugesh's reading has disappeared. I need to finish you off already and investigate," Bardock replied without any smirking or chuckling. This was a clear sign that the Saiyan was no longer viewing this battle as a surface to scratch his itching fists on but more as a nuisance that held him back from his real goals.

This madman had the power to just explode in might like that out of the blue without even knowing it. It wasn't him who needed to finish this fight off, it was Piccolo. Or else more of his pals might vanish from the face of the Earth and he'll continue to escalate in power until there will be nothing that Piccolo could do about it.

The only thing Piccolo could hope for now was that this borrowed, unnatural power wouldn't last or would blow up in the Saiyan's own face soon enough. Else there might not be any Earth left for Piccolo to establish his tyrannical reign over.


	114. Sacrifice Friends For Big Power Level

"This has been a blast, Namekian, but I feel like my squad needs my help so I can waste no more time here," Bardock lowered his block with a forced motion. His hands shook while his overheating body struggled to keep him in a state fit for fighting. And yet his fighting strength had skyrocketed somehow.

With a proud roar, Bardock dashed at Piccolo who did not respond to the opponent's attack, instead he chose to extend his arm and focus on a Ki blast. Bardock's fist dug deep into Piccolo's unprotected jaw, flinching the Namekian and drawing blood. Now that the Saiyan's power had escalated to the state where it rivaled and surpassed Piccolo's, Bardock didn't need to perform the equivalent of cartwheels of physical violence for elementary battle damage anymore.

Piccolo halted himself in mid-air, extending his arm out again and reforming the Ki blast he had channeled together, regaining all of the progress in a single instance before firing it with a yell that transitioned into a grunt of pain once Bardock navigated himself around Piccolo's round Ki blast and bolted himself into the gut of the reborn Demon King, nearly punching a hole through his opponent while sending Piccolo flapping and striding across the surface of the still, arctic waters in uncontrollable flips.

By the time Bardock noticed the blast coming at him, it was too late. In his rush and blind fury, his attempt to utilize every ounce of his unexpected second wind before his fighting spirit fades away, Bardock had missed the fact that Piccolo's Ki blast had halted right after missing the Saiyan and careened back at his face from behind him. Piccolo's Chasing Bullet hit Bardock right in the face, flipping the rebellious Saiyan over and smashing his scouter to pieces while streaks of red flooded the Saiyan's already injured face.

"I guess in your current berserk state a little pea-shooter like that won't kill you but… I've got to make sure that you don't power up like that again, just in case some of those useless humans kill any more of your comrades…" Piccolo chuckled to himself, wiping the purple blood off of his lip and nose.

The still surface of the water on which Bardock floated rustled, the rustles escalated into furious waves as the Saiyan shot his eyes wide open and burst upward like an arrow, racing against the clock and his own breaking down body until he had reached the height which his enemy loomed over the battlefield from.

"So you've smashed my scouter, prevented me from communicating or reaching my teammates, huh?" Bardock spat aside and released an unintelligible roar as he unleashed what remained of his enigmatic second wind burst of strength.

The rebellious Saiyan vanished before Piccolo's eyes, surprising the Namekian with the sudden burst of speed. Even with the Saiyan being so injured in the battle, even with him taking Piccolo Chasing Bullet square in the face, he still had this much Ki left to fight with. The Namekian spread his arms out wide, unleashing his own Ki into a smaller explosive wave that threw Bardock flipping back before he could deliver his speedy attack.

Piccolo vanished, appearing in front of his airborne opponent with a stiff kick to Bardock's mid-section. Having gained control over Bardock's aerial path, Piccolo shocked the injured Saiyan further with a chop to his chest that stunned the Saiyan in place while shaking the ramparts of his ribcage and driving an excessive amount of blood from Bardock's mouth as the chest area had already sustained plenty of damage in this brawl.

Using his swiftest flight speed, Piccolo took up higher from where he could divekick his opponent back down to the freezing depths below the surface of which had been beginning to boil from the heated exchange between the rebellious Saiyan that demanded everything this planet had to offer, including his own son, and a would-be demon that wanted to rule it as a tyrant he was meant to be. After dive kicking his opponent down, Piccolo pursued Bardock and slashed with his claws at his damaged opponent, leaving streaks of red wherever he struck.

Once his bloodlust had been sated for the moment, Piccolo transitioned to the more old-fashioned, physical beatdown, using a rising knee strike to elevate his opponent who was, at the time, crashing back down and shocking every bone in Bardock's body from the inertia that such a switch of direction placed on it. It was not only Piccolo's strikes that threatened to crush Bardock's body like a twig, but Piccolo had also become a more intelligent fighter, utilizing the very laws of physics and fundamental forces to aid his sadistic assault whenever he was not striking and clawing at his opponent directly.

Pursuing his opponent further, Piccolo struck with his elbow to Bardock's gut, trying to make a mashed mess of the Saiyan's internal organs before stomping his enemy a couple of dozens of times and striking with a flurry of chops, slashes of his claws and knee strikes before vanishing behind Bardock and kicking him in the back, vanishing again to emit a Kiai shockwave right in front of Bardock's face and sending the Saiyan crashing into a faraway glacier, reducing it to mere snowflakes from the force of the Saiyan's impact as Piccolo took a calmer breath and regained his composure.

He didn't like how rigid Bardock's body and his muscles felt when Piccolo was striking it. Every punch and kick felt like hitting a brick wall to the point where the Namekian wondered if he had even gotten to any of Bardock's internals with his rampage. He had expended a decent amount of effort in an attempt to quell this frightening second wind and had to resort to fighting at full power in a way only Son Goku had ever forced him to.

It was over now, it had to be. Piccolo pressed his hand to his chest that twitched and pulsed from the physical effort he had exerted. He wasn't used to fighting at full power. He might have trained hard in order to become strong enough to crush the humans' resistance but nothing was a suitable substitute for real life-or-death brawl like this. Bardock's Ki had dwindled after this beatdown though being more than just a bruiser Piccolo noticed it wasn't because of the damage Bardock had sustained.

When Bardock smashed against the glacier, he still had more than enough Ki to challenge Piccolo and regain his footing in this clash. It was shortly after that Bardock's Ki had dropped several times over and became too weak to threaten even the weaker human martial artists. With his scouter destroyed, there would be no reason for any more emotional outbursts or surprises. Bardock was done.

A loud splashing noise of separating water made Piccolo's glare sharpen and witness the rising waves washing away the remains of the glacier Bardock had smashed into as the Saiyan emerged from underwater with blood washed away from his body, for now. Battered and bruised, the Saiyan emerged to challenge Piccolo once more. This man might just have had more guts than his son.

"Hmph… Your strength had dwindled so low that I might not have noticed if you tried to slip away. You should have just run." Piccolo mocked his opponent while clenching his wrist and relaxing his hand in preparation for what he perceived to be a much less hardy beatdown. Whereas hitting an opponent of Bardock's berserk state power felt like punching against a brick wall, beating down someone as weakened as his current state would have not been much different from crushing a tomato.

"You're crafty, I'll hand you that…" Bardock panted, clutching at the bleeding wounds on his chest. Piccolo noticed that there were a few burns over on Bardock's face, suggesting that the Saiyan had used some crude Ki blasts to cauterize the wounds on his face so that he could see better.

"Without your do-hickey, you can't know for sure how your team is doing. That means you won't be going out of control on me again. This is no longer a battle, this is your execution," Piccolo finished warming up and took a fighting stance in mid-air.

"Heh…" Bardock chuckled.

"Defiant to the very end, just like your son. I must say, when Son laughs in a perilous moment, stating he enjoys battles like that I sort of understand him. You, on the other hand, your sadistic tendencies… That's something even a reincarnation of a Demon King like myself cannot comprehend," Piccolo hissed at his opponent.

"You might have made a grave mistake by blowing up my scouter, Namekian…" Bardock's eyes widened. A sudden feeling of dread rushed into Piccolo's chest, fuel for an unexplained flame of terror. "I've noticed how you were capable of tracking the course of battle without a scouter. Sensing my location, tracking battles all over this planet with careless glances here and then…"

"No way!" Piccolo exclaimed in disbelief. "You couldn't have!"

"Master your method of battle power tracking? No. Not quite… I cannot understand the principles of the way you Earthlings fight just yet but… It seems so odd, so… Spiritual." Bardock tore off the wristband that had been tattering over his arm and barely holding on a few threads, just getting in the way and threw the wristband away, standing before Piccolo with his bare chest and just shallow remains of his black bodysuit weave on his lower body and stripped bare of any alien technology he landed on Earth with.

"It's called martial arts. Another Saiyan had become so entranced by this concept that she far overstayed her welcome here on Earth too." Piccolo replied.

"I see… So there are more Saiyans willing to disobey King Vegeta, that bastard Frieza and honor the traditional Saiyan way of life, I'm glad to hear that." Bardock nodded with a calm face.

"You can take that serenity to your grave, at least I'll know you won't haunt me from deep down under," Piccolo taunted his opponent.

"You've underestimated me and my bond to my squad, Namekian." Bardock focused his glare at Piccolo, reigniting the passionate flame of combat within him and using his eyes as mirroring lenses to his burning warrior's soul. "I don't need some worthless scrap to know when my friends are in danger!" he roared out, unleashing a shockwave of raw power from deep within that flung Piccolo back without asking permission from the aspiring Earth's ruler first.

"W-What!?" Piccolo hissed.

"We've fought alongside on countless worlds, we've become far closer than mere just family and any one of us would be willing to die for any one of the others. That is a bond you cannot separate me from!" Bardock continued to surge with Earth-shaking power that called for sky-scraping waves by the raging Saiyan merely expressing the spiritual connection to his squad and floating above the ocean.

"Shugesh, Taro, Celipa… I can hear your cries. Don't worry, your captain's coming. These fists will blast through even Frieza in order to save you!" Bardock leaned on his right foot that he moved behind him in preparation for an assault.

Bardock charged without wasting the Ki on vanishing or after-images. This was the shared strength that he drew from his teammates and he would not squander it by throwing it away on crafty movement tricks. Though that might have been his mistake. Piccolo placed his block feeling the weight of entire moons smashing against his hand. The overwhelming pain, the utter panic inspiring by his bones popping with a volume comparable to an explosion.

Even defending himself against this relentless rampage felt like going through hell. Piccolo threw wild punches and kicks in response, clashing with his rampaging opponent midway and dancing all across the continent, neither one of the two cared much to examine how fast they were exchanging blows. The eyes of both Piccolo and Bardock had gone white and both combatants had chosen to abandon their forethought and any intellectual comprehension of their tango or else they'd have gone mad from the pain that they were causing to each other's bodies.

Piccolo was the first one to return to his senses. His body would no longer listen to him when he ordered it to. His arms hung weightless by his sides, broken and squirting fountains of purple while his bones stuck out from multiple gashes where he had clearly overexerted himself. The cruel arctic sent its chilling breeze though Piccolo could only feel it when it caressed the bleeding patches of his body as he was simply too overworked and sweaty to care in any other case.

The Demon King spread his arms out and roared, with explosive bursts, both of his ruined arms exploded into chunks of bone, flesh, and blood and, with a second wild grunt, new ones took their place. Strength seemed to be evaporating through his pores just like the warmth he had garnered from this gruesome physical labor had been this whole time.

Piccolo's antennae lit up with a thunderous crackle, sending a jolt of electric Ki in Bardock's direction. The mindless Saiyan who operated only with a bloody vengeance in his mind attempted to swat the lightning aside only to become engulfed by it. The electricity contorted Bardock's body into a position of discomfort as the Saiyan found himself stunned in place by Piccolo tapping into some of Kami's psychokinetic tricks.

"The one to get gone will be you!" Piccolo huffed as he pressed two of his fingers to his forehead and began focusing more and more Ki into their tip.

"Damn you, Namekian!" Bardock yelled out as he wrestled against the psychokinetic hold with the full realization that his life might have depended on it. "I should have known you'd pull some dirty trick like that!"

"Heh, oh, the irony… I intended to use this technique to kill your son but I'd end up using it to send his father to the Otherworld instead. The only drawback is that I will need to charge it long enough to hear you speak. At least have the decency to beg for your life after the trouble you've caused me," Piccolo finally found the confidence in himself to laugh and mock his opponent right in his face.

"I'll kill you! Even if you kill me first, I'll smash your head in from beyond the grave, remember this, Namekian! The only way for you to escape my wrath is if my son caves your skull in first!" Bardock appeared to have dealt with his upcoming fate as he had failed to wrestle out of Piccolo's hold and, even if it was weakening with each movement of his continuing struggle, it did not appear that he'd manage to break out in time no matter how much he struggled against it.

"Special Beam Cannon!" Piccolo extended his middle and index fingers, sending a focused beam of Ki with a spiraling secondary beam rotating around its tip crashing right at Bardock's chest, aiming to pierce right through the Saiyan's heart. Bardock cried out in pain while the beam struggled and drilled against his chest and detonated after a brief struggle.

"Hmph… I guess the beam was too weak to penetrate your heart, still… Not even you could have…" Piccolo huffed.

A thunderous fist that robbed Piccolo of his senses shut him up before he could finish his sentence. With an expression of blind fury, Bardock had dived out from the rubble, having broken out of Piccolo's psychokinesis just after taking the brunt of his Special Beam Cannon and sent Piccolo reeling and stumbling back with a bruise on his jaw.

"Damn…" Bardock winced in pain and tried comforting his broken knuckles. A patch of blackened burns decorated the Saiyan's chest with a couple of trickles of crimson running down though Piccolo's coup de grace appeared to have failed to do quite the damage that Piccolo intended to do with it. "I'm sorry, Shugesh, Celipa, Taro… I… I guess not even our combined strength is enough,"

"Y-You! This can't be… Unless… That's it, I must have squandered too much Ki regenerating my arms, I knew I didn't put in enough charge time too but… Who would have thought that the first Special Beam Cannon seen by someone else would end up being so piss-poor?" Piccolo hissed at his opponent.

"Hey, it's Piccolo!" a vexing voice distracted the two fighters. Piccolo turned behind him, ignoring the greatly weakened opponent who had once again lost his dramatic surge of emotional strength, knowing that the Saiyan was far too honorable to attack him when his guard was down. In addition to that, Bardock himself had quite an interest in the approaching duo.

"Kakarot!" Bardock muttered.

"Yo, Piccolo! So, you've been taking on the Saiyan all by yourself, huh? Wow, if this guy's giving you this much trouble, he must be crazy-strong!" Goku shrieked out in excitement. His cheer turned to shock when he turned at the Saiyan and witnessed the striking similarities between himself and the enemy.

"H-Huh!? How come the enemy Saiyan looks just like Goku!?" Krillin's jaw dropped as he pointed at Bardock.

"You mean you didn't know? This Saiyan is Son's father," Piccolo grumbled. He hated seeing these two here but by now the battle has weakened him to the point where he couldn't quite do anything about it.

"My father…!?" Goku rattled back without his breath.

"This isn't quite how I expected us to meet, Kakarot," Bardock turned to his son face-to-face. "Sorry I sent you to the same dump as this mongrel, I wasn't aware that the Namekians were sending their children away to toughen them up too."

"So, you're my father? You're kind of a jerk!" Goku objected to the man before him. "Why did you send that Saiyan to destroy my house!? My son was in there!"

"Your… Son?" Bardock's eyes widened.

"That's right, Gohan was in there and your gorilla almost blew him up! So, don't go around calling me Kakariek or whatever. My name is Son Goku and I'm a Saiyan raised on Earth and I don't want any of your Saiyan business here!" Goku yelled out.

"Fierce… So fierce…" Bardock smirked and let out a brief snicker. "Come on, then. I want to see just how strong you've grown."

"Hey! Don't think our fight is over!" Piccolo objected, throwing his fist out.

"Fine," Bardock sighed. "I'll take you both on at once then."

"Both!? Don't make me laugh, you could barely handle me…" Piccolo sneered.

"Holy crap, this guy's absolutely insane, I don't any part of this!" Krillin freaked out.

"We should give him a Senzu," Goku scratched his head.

"Absolutely not!" Piccolo growled at his oaf of an accidental partner.

"It doesn't feel very right fighting him when he's all banged up like that though…" Goku sighed though he still assumed his fighting stance.

"Don't be ridiculous, Goku, he's a Saiyan like you and Chayote. His strength would go way up if we gave him a Senzu now. Plus, we don't even have any at the moment…" Krillin shrugged from the sidelines, looking for a glacier he could observe the battle from though it appeared that the raging battle had totaled the entire area already.

"Don't you worry, son, as a Saiyan, my true strength only becomes apparent when my back's pressed to a wall. We must keep challenging ourselves without fear or limits, or else we'll never improve!" Bardock replied in a rare moment of serene self-reflection. "Now, show me what you've learned."


	115. Bardock's Mistake

Goku and Piccolo took off at Bardock at the same time. For someone that started out as mortal enemies, the two seemed to work off of one another without any amateur flaws. Their movement and positioning perfectly balanced and complementing that of the other. Bardock's crystalline aura burst into motion. Goku's spirit faltered for just a second with the young Saiyan not being used to the enemy's Ki skyrocketing like that. Piccolo, meanwhile, was much more used to that already so he ended up being the one to press on the attack.

A furious flurry of strikes all of which Bardock had evaded with proper space control, bobbing and weaving aside and powering through the burning sensation in the Saiyan's ribs. Once Bardock moved outside of Piccolo's reach, the Namekian lengthened his limbs and began lashing them at his enemy though Bardock once again maneuvered around them. He possessed some semblance of skill in this manner of evasive action to the point where it seemed like he'd have been doing it often before. The sort of familiarity with evasiveness while using aerial agility that didn't require Bardock's full focus nor for his body to be intact.

Goku joined into the fray, flying in over Piccolo's head with a knee strike which Bardock felt forced to block. A grunt soaked with pain left Bardock's chest and the few trickles of blood running from his mouth intensified as this relentless brawl put the greatest strain on Bardock's damaged innards yet. Goku's father blocked both Goku's vaulting ax kick as well as his many attempts to jab at his father's openings. This was a different type of martial artist from those Goku had fought earlier.

Bardock hadn't been tutored in any sorts of martial arts but he knew how to fight. Not as well as Piccolo and Goku did but the vast practical experience in inflicting pain and practicing physical violence made Bardock so experienced in the ways of bruising and fisticuffs that the difference between the skill of a hardened martial artist that honed his skill his entire life and a would-be Demon King that inherited almost divine skill though still lacked a layer of cement over it and a seasoned warrior who had built his scrapping up from scratch was not great enough for it to decide the battle.

The Saiyan warrior let out a deafening roar, augmented by the Ki that formed a devastating bubble of destruction around him which expanded in a concussive shockwave which blasted both Goku and Piccolo apart and left them reeling to recover from the overwhelming blast of Bardock's rising power.

"What the heck's going on?" Goku grunted. "It's like he's growing stronger while fighting… It's just like Chayote said that one time."

"No. This isn't the first time he's done this. It never lasts long and it strains his own body because he's not used to wielding so much power. He's drawing power from desperation, he feels his comrades are in danger and that's what's letting him tap into all that power but it isn't his power, it doesn't last. Just weather it and press on when he's weakening again…" Piccolo scolded his temporary ally.

"Celipa, Tora, Borgos, Shugesh, Taro, and Leek… You guys are relying on me to pull you out and bring you home and that's exactly what I'm gonna do. And… Gine, I'll make sure to knock some sense into our boy and return home to you too," Bardock raised his bloody arm up and formed a blinding Ki blast that kept on growing in size and power with each name that Bardock had uttered. "It's been a blast, you Namekian fiend, but this is between me and Kakarot!"

The speed of Bardock's hearty attack seemed to skip beats and moments in time as the next thing anyone knew Bardock had enclosed his fist with his nurturing Ki blast still inside and socked Piccolo in the jaw having closed the distance between them in an instant. Rising over his head, Bardock shot his hand out and unleashed all of the fighting spirit he's been accumulating in the shape of a single, focused Ki wave that blinded and pushed Goku away with its intensity alone as Goku couldn't try and intercept it despite his intention of doing so.

With all sense being knocked right out from Piccolo with that one, crunchy cross, the Namekian couldn't recover in time to vanish or leave an afterimage and deal with the overwhelming attack. Bardock's spirited assault enveloped the Namekian and drilled through the arctic oceans, causing them to boil as it sent out a devastating flare off into the void of space. All of the energy had to escape somewhere and Bardock didn't mean to destroy Earth just yet, which meant that the energy had to flare up in the opposite direction.

When all the dazzling and shimmering of the blast had subsided, it was difficult to tell the heavens from dirt. Stones and gravel poured from the sky, the ground couldn't contain its trembling and wild whirlpools howled as the water could no longer sit still with all the devastation lingering in the region. There was no ice anywhere in the vicinity, just pillars of stone. Ones that still stayed stuck to the ground and others that fell from the sky. Krillin wriggled and swam around in mid-air, feeling confused and thinking himself plummeting to the ground when he opened his eyes when in fact it was the wreckage from up above that once more answered gravity's call and sought to join the formations and clusters that it was once part of.

"Piccolo!" Goku yelled out, looking around without keeping much attention to his father. Piccolo's Ki was still present, just a weak speck but if he was still conscious, it was more than likely that Piccolo would still insist on keeping the fight up. It was just the kind of gutsy guy that the reincarnated Demon King was.

"Krillin, don't let Piccolo fight anymore. If he takes any more attacks like this, he'll die and then the Dragon Balls will be gone for good," Goku turned to Krillin who looked freaked out after first hearing this request. "Don't worry, in his current state you can subdue him if you need to," Goku assured his friend right after noticing Krillin's qualms.

"Now it's just us, Kakarot…" Bardock panted, looking at his trembling hand. He couldn't sense just how much Ki he had lost after attacking in such a desperate way. His Ki sensory was more instinctual, it more related to being able to feel if his friends and comrades were in danger rather than being aware of the flow of battle for which he'd have still used a scouter.

"Enough!" Goku yelled out. "You're all worn out, I'll knock you flat if you don't leave Earth alone now!"

"That's my boy, fighting fiercely for what you want to protect, just like your old man…" Bardock snickered before putting up his hand and shaping another bright source of light. "I don't think I've got any more strength left to fight you, you're right. I've howled my heart and spirit out for my friends but I can't hear their voices anymore."

"You don't seem like a bad guy, leave Earth now. You've caused enough damage. If you keep trying to destroy Earth or hurt my family and friends, I won't hold back!" Goku warned.

"You're fierce but Earth's made you hesitant to use your power. I don't mean to hurt you or destroy your home, Kakarot, just remind you, teach you of who you really are. You're a Saiyan and every Saiyan needs to heed the call for a battle that roars in their heart and pumps through their veins. And right now there is no greater battle in the universe than that against King Vegeta and Frieza," Bardock let the Ki blast in his hand form and glisten with an even brighter, more refined light before it took a perfectly round shape and hovered over his hand, draining his strength instead of boosting it as most feats of Ki manipulation did.

"You're wrong! I'm Son Goku, I've been born a Saiyan but I grew up on Earth. I've got a family here and my friends and I don't want to fight any of your battles. If you were mean and got into a heap of trouble, you'll have to deal with that yourself, don't drag me or my family into it!" Goku appealed to his father's senses again but Bardock just chuckled.

"No matter how hard you resist your true nature, Kakarot, I might lack the strength to beat it into your thick skull, not unlike that of your old man's, but I have another way of reminding you just who you are – a Saiyan!" Bardock yelled out, throwing his Ki blast up into the air. Goku was prepared to smack this technique that his father had been preparing aside but he froze when Bardock chose to instead lob it over his head and off into the sky.

Bardock's Power Ball cut through the clouds, leaving a narrow hole where it had shot through. Once Bardock clenched his fist, spraying blood from his wounds in how much exertion he put into his collapsing body, the Power Ball blew up in size though it was no flickering destruction. Instead of a flash that blinked away, consumed and destroyed like most Ki blasts, this Power Ball lingered in the sky, spreading blinding light across the horizon.

"No! Don't look at it!" Krillin yelled out.

"Shut up, Earthling, Kakarot has no choice, he can't avoid the light of the Power Ball. This light will reveal his true form, free him from your mind-washing and weakness, and free the warrior that's still deep down there somewhere!" Bardock growled, clutching over his own abdomen in pain as his body was beginning to swell up in thickness and bulk greatly.

"No, you don't understand, Goku doesn't have a tail, he won't be able to transform!" Krillin yelled out.

"W-What!?" something snapped in Bardock's mind, his berserk eyes that saw only his humanity slipping away like vapor from his body, being replaced by something more primal and monstrous, his mind being corrupted and taken over by the monster that lurked inside each and every member of his species, one thing his eyes could not see, however, was his son's tail.

It did not matter though, with the budding fur all over Bardock's body and the drastic change of his facial structure to resemble something more basic and simian in appearance, it was far too late into the transformation process to halt what Bardock had done. Even if his body had been driven to the edge where a strong blow could have settled the fight then and there, this new transformation into the Great Ape had summoned primeval strength from within Bardock's own subconscious and his very genetic structure, causing what little battle power he still maintained to boost up tenfold.

Even in his battered and bruised shape, Bardock was several times more powerful and vastly more dangerous than he'd have been in perfect health and full power in his base form.

"The… The Great Ape monster…" Goku shook in place, he wasn't sure what he was fighting anymore. Was it his own father still or was it the Great Ape monster that showed up during the full moon and rampaged across the world? The berserk creature that smashed his own grandfather all those years ago.

None of Goku's words or actions reached the wild beast as Bardock, now in his Great Ape form, just pounded his chest and roared out. Flexing out and working on overpowering the pain that littered his monstrous body with sheer, wild madness alone. It was that very pain that drove the beast to grab onto its savage fury even further and sent it into thrashing madness.

Bardock's backhanded swipe that should have smacked Goku aside only swung through thin air as Goku had lit up in Hot-Red Mode for just a moment and took off to Krillin and outside the rampaging beast's view. Driven mad by the absence of a visible enemy to smash and still moments away from sniffing out the meek trio of an Earthling, a Namekian and a Saiyan cowering before him down below, the Great Ape snagged a crashing boulder from mid-air and smashed it over its head before roaring out as he aimed for his booming voice to crack the planet all by itself.

"This is crazy, you've got to leave and take Piccolo with you!" Goku grabbed Krillin by his shoulders and shook his friend. The petrified look on Goku's face made Krillin skip the phase where he faltered and questioned his friend's decision. He stared back for a short while with a wavering gaze but he lifted off with Piccolo hanging over his shoulder.

"Don't you dare!" Piccolo hissed. "The Mafuba… I can still… Seal the beast…"

"Don't argue with me, Piccolo!" Goku lashed out. "If you die, the Dragon Balls will be gone. We don't yet know how many people the Saiyans have killed so far. We don't know how badly they'll mess up the Earth and it won't be easy to stop the Great Ape monster either. With your damaged body – you'll die for sure sealing this guy."

"Tsk… Your father was right, Son… You might not have become… An ape like him but… You're still just being greedy and you just… Want to fight him all on your own," Piccolo turned his spiteful eyes up and directed them to Goku.

"Get Piccolo away from here," Goku turned his back to Piccolo after noticing the beast beginning to seek for its next prey again. There simply was no time to argue with him with the Great Ape seeking a scapegoat to vent its savage nature onto with the entire planet possibly becoming its target if it couldn't find someone sturdy to knock around.

Krillin pushed Piccolo off his side and punched at the Namekian's gut, forcing the reincarnation of the Demon King to pass out. In his weakened state, it was possible for Krillin to deal such a blow to the Namekian and the Earthling didn't want the crafty entity that hosted both the Demon King Piccolo and Kami inside it to try anything and sabotage Goku's choice to confront his transformed father alone as well as deactivate the Dragon Balls.

Goku nodded in approval and took off, distracting the Great Ape by blasting it with a barrage of Ki blasts from its side, forcing the monster to not respond in kind. Krillin took Piccolo's unconscious body off the rough wreckage and took off. He was strong himself, who knew, maybe together he and Goku would stand a better shot against the Great Ape though not even their combined Ki, even if they were multiplied a few times both together, they wouldn't have matched that of the beast.

The Dragon Team needed Piccolo safe and away from the battlefield and Krillin was a capable body that could save this key figure in the plans to come. He might have been strong, he might have still been able to become stronger using the Hot-Red Mode but it didn't matter. Just being a skilled martial artist, an all-around powerful and crafty guy didn't matter at this time. Krillin kept convincing himself of that as he withdrew from the battlefield with Piccolo's unconscious body hanging over him.

* * *

"Guys!" a staticy and muddled transmission broke through. "I'm almost there… How's the battle going?"

Bulma swam through handfuls of leftover junk and plowed through staff, robotic and human alike to dash to her laboratory and run-up to the microphone. She hadn't received as much as a single transmission from Chayote all this time to the point where she had forgotten that the Saiyan existed. She's been getting worried and that was all that she was good for.

"Chayote, Chayote, is that you!? Oh, God, Chayote… I've been so worried, everyone's doing their best, I've no way of tracking the battle so… Upa came down to Capsule Corp asking how the Great Apes worked and he tried calming me down but… There was this huge cataclysmic quake that resonated throughout the whole planet and the media is in a fritz now! You said you were near, how did you get here so fast!?" Bulma cried out onto the communication link. She was struggling with both tears of joy and worry.

"I've used the wormhole map of Frieza Planet No. 79 to skip through massive patches of space while bending space-time around my ship to speed it up during long stretches of travel. I'll be there in more than a day."

"W-Wait… You're still over a day away?" Bulma wanted to freak out and yell like she used to but she couldn't find the strength and confidence to do so. For whatever reason, feeling the ground shaking underneath her feet and electricity switching on and off made her feel so powerless and inconsequential in the face of something that could have just blinked out the entire planet without anything that she could do about it, without Bulma even knowing until she'd get blinked out by superheated space gas and wake up in the Otherworld.

"Excuse me, are we just going to ignore the part where I'm literally abusing curvatures in space-time to burrow closer to Earth sooner?" Chayote grumbled. "Also, bending the fabric of space-time around a ship traveling as fast as this one is no small feat, even after I arrive I'll need a breather and maybe a Senzu…"

"Okay, okay… Just… Hurry up, please. I've got a really bad feeling about all of this," Bulma pleaded.

This was just what Chayote needed right now. She had never heard that blue-haired hag pleading or begging for help like that. She was oftentimes mad and sometimes got pretty despicable but this type of attitude… Just great, now Chayote would feel all guilty if she didn't switch her hustle up to eleven and got there in time for a heroic rescue.

Honestly, she should have just stayed in Babaria and wrestled Babarians trying to usurp her throne in peace. She was too far away, to begin with. Bulma contacted her with this impossible request, she was way out of her depth to rely on Chayote to pull them out…

"Okay, time for whining is over…" Chayote sighed. She closed her eyes and focused on the task of scoping the whizzing space-time around her vessel, trying to squeeze it using nothing but her focus and her Ki at the other end, like a tube of toothpaste to hurry and push herself toward Earth even faster.

"Attention, attention, two vessels within radar's range," the ship's AI shrieked out, disrupting Chayote's focus.

"I'm trying to concentrate here!" Chayote growled.

"You asked me to inform you about all vessels present in your immediate vicinity. Shall I stop doing that from now on?" the ship's AI brought up a valid point which was one of its less fascinating features. It was like arguing with Bulma who was an actual genius-scientist.

"Are they faster vessels than us?" Chayote sighed.

"They are Attack Balls, at our current speed we outperform them by 45%, without factoring in any possible wormhole shortcuts," the ship's AI replied.

"Attack Balls? Reinforcements, maybe scouts? Could this be the reason behind the bad feeling Bulma has? Either way, at this pace they'll lag behind us by a decent chunk, let's just focus on getting to Earth sooner," Chayote closed her eyes again, choosing to focus on quenching the nagging feeling of guilt in her gut by doing everything in her power to get to Earth faster.

At this point, this was uncharted territory. Nobody had a vision on Korin Tower that went beyond this point, this was the moment that Chayote dreaded and tried to avoid – Goku's father finding Earth and confronting his son. Though at the time it was because she didn't think they'd be able to handle it or the attention from the Frieza Army, after her time training in space for seven whole years, she was certain that she'd be able to cause enough trouble for the space tyrant's goons if they ever snooped their noses anywhere near this part of the galaxy.

"Just a little bit longer, you guys…" Chayote mumbled under her nose. These past couple of days were troublesome, almost no rest and constant focus, constant thoughts on how to skip some more space, and win more time. All she had to do was survive one more day of this, then she'd get to kick the ass of Goku's father in return for all that trouble.


	116. Goku's Last Stand

"Alright, I'll keep you busy!" Goku declared with a resolute face as he dashed up at the jaw of the Great Ape and delivered a high kick upward aimed at the beast's chin. The titan's crimson eyes blinked and the monster flinched from the impact but no signs of considerable damage tipped Goku off that his attacks might have been at all effective.

Never having been one to give up or stop halfway, the young Saiyan vanished and threw a straight cross to the center of the Great Ape's nose before kicking a pair of times to each of the monster's nostrils. The Great Ape emit an uproar of torment but Goku was no longer there. Jabbing across the beast's eyes and the space in between then with a quick flurry of punches. Once Goku noted how his fists may as well have been wet rags smashing against stone, the martial artist improvised a swift spin kick to the ape's right eye and threw a wayward Ki blast to the left.

Once he thought he had the monster on the ropes, Goku appeared over the Great Ape's head and smashed at the top of his transformed father's belfry. What he had foreseen to be a decisive smash that would knock the monster flat was instead just a dull thud that appeared to piss the monster off more than anything else. The Great Ape thrashed around, throwing mad fists about.

"Damn! I must have spent a whole lot of Ki taking down that big guy from before. Guess my body's been out of the loop of using Hot-Red…" Goku grunted to himself, looking perplexed at his situation and to what any possible solutions to his problem might have been. "At least it doesn't look like you're too sharp in this form. I'd be in trouble if you actually knew how to fight…"

A flash of blinding white caught Goku by surprise. The roar that came from the jaws of the titanic creature only reached him once he had been caught inside the deluge of the beast's mouth blast. Great Ape Bardock was spitting fury in the form of supercharged Ki at the same time as he thrashed about looking to wreak havoc. Hearing his own cry as if he was listening to it beside him from some other place felt odd and disorienting. Had it not been for the searing pain, Goku might have bought in to the idea that he was dead.

Vociferous, high pitched blasts resonated throughout the devastated, rocky battlefield. This breath of raw power that took Goku down was only one of his father's outbursts of wrath. He had to move. If he didn't, he'd die for sure. Goku opened his eyes but there was no light, his vision was playing tricks on him. The last time he had his eyes opened – all was white, now things were dark again even when his eyes were opened in an attempt to escape the shade. It was only when the crushing weight of the Great Ape's hammering slam hit Goku and crushed him into the rocks below that the Saiyan realized he's been found and smashed.

A smash, a pair of stomps… Even if Goku could neither hear nor feel the Great Ape monster's rampage, his experience, and skill in martial arts allowed him to imagine the unskilled and mindless body of his enemy as clearly as if he'd have been able to see it. The Great Ape wasn't resolute with smashing Goku either. It lacked the proper focus even for this simple task, its fury was reserved for the world that hosted it and not one particular person that it saw. Goku's end might not have been in any way more satisfying to the beast than the devastation of a nearby pillar of bedrock.

That might have been the only reason why Goku found a chance to breathe through the relentless beatdown and get back to the fight.

"Hot-Red!" Goku yelled out, emitting a prideful blaze of red Ki from his body as his skin took a deeper shade of pink and his sweat seemed to heat up to the point of boiling. The Saiyan raised his left fist and launched himself toward the monster, hoping that he could somewhat lessen the tremendous difference between their powers.

If was of no use, the titan swatted his hand and knocked Goku aside like an annoying gnat. The martial artist could barely deal with his own grunts as his busted ribs made even translating his pain difficult. Using Hot-Red was the absolute worst idea. It served as a nice clutch tip of the scales against an opponent just barely stronger but it only hastened Goku's collapse when there was no hope in the first place.

The sky over his head turned dark. Goku hustled to move from the shadow of the titan's foot but his body felt powerless and broken. He had hoped to put up more of a struggle but his father's dumb move had put not only him but the entire planet in jeopardy.

* * *

"Hmph… So Planet Earth is the pathetic rock that Bardock and his goons chose to hide in?" a mocking tone that could have only belonged to a bulky man spoke up. Oftentimes the short, spiky-haired Saiyan found his companion's voice irritating but this time Prince Vegeta had to agree with his partner – Planet Earth did not sound like the sanctuary he'd be choosing for his hideout.

"Fat good it did them. From the sound of it, the pricks got themselves wiped out," Vegeta cursed. When he took the assignment from Lord Frieza to eradicate a troublesome platoon of scoundrel Saiyan rebels that plotted against his father he had viewed the task as being far more than it turned out to be.

"Come on, let's hurry up to that abandoned wreck and give them the finishing blow!" the ever-impatient muscle-head tempted Vegeta.

"Patience, Nappa, something doesn't feel right. Bardock might be low-class trash, just like his deserter of a son, but he must have chosen this planet for a reason. There aren't many records of it in our database and there are only passing mentions of it being under the Galaxy Patrol's protection. Why would he choose to land there right before heading off to Planet Vegeta?" the Saiyan Prince sat there and stared through the porthole of his pod at the vastness of space leading up to the planet where the rebellious Saiyan filth hid.

"They got their asses kicked, maybe they planned on taking some vicious creature from this planet and sick it on your father?" Nappa wondered. He wasn't usually one for bright ideas though this one was somewhat likely, given that they were dealing with someone as mentally impaired as a low-class Saiyan.

"It seems far too simple of a plan, my father is not the kind of warrior that would fall before some space monster from a faraway planet. He is a king of the space-conquering race of elite warriors. Even low-class garbage like Bardock can deal with vicious space monsters, following that chain, my father is the king of handling such matters. Do not insult the king again by suggesting otherwise, Nappa," Vegeta replied with a calm demeanor. He couldn't outright deny the validity of Nappa's theory though he had a hunch that he was way off. There was something… Something Bardock wanted from this place and it felt like rushing to a battle naked to enter this planet without knowing what that sought-after treasure was.

"S-Sorry, Vegeta… I didn't mean it as an insult, I meant it that Bardock would think that your father couldn't handle some scary monster just because he has trouble handling it, you know?" Nappa tried pacifying the situation, knowing full-well how sudden Vegeta's outbursts were and how deadly were the results. Lord Frieza had always intended Vegeta's squad to be a five-man squad just like the Ginyu Special Squad though Vegeta has killed everyone but Nappa when he felt offended or challenged. "T-That's right, didn't Raditz try to flee to Earth that one time? I think he tried convincing us to go with him too…"

Frankly, Vegeta couldn't quite recall if that was the case or not. He had killed many would-be partners but Nappa and it wasn't like Nappa was in any way special. It was just that Nappa had managed to maneuver around getting blown up and somehow ended up being useful once or twice and saving his life just when Vegeta's trigger hand got itchy. Just like now… Vegeta couldn't even recall Raditz's name, just his dirty face and final moments when his vessel blew up. By Vegeta's own hand, of course. Nappa did sound quite confident in his memory though, he'd have not suggested something false like that when Vegeta already warned him about treading very thin ice.

"That's right, that's what it was, Earth. He wanted to pick up his little brother… What was his name?" Nappa wondered. It was at times like when Vegeta had to stare at Nappa's boulder-like head being in out of its depth like at the grueling task of thinking that the Saiyan Prince regretted the technological advancement of monitors in spacecraft.

"The records appear to list Earth as an unimpressive planet that's not worth the attention of dedicated expansion. No planet on the entire system possesses any valuable minerals and most minerals found on Earth are found it greater quantities much closer in that same system. Locals possess pathetic battle powers and there are no considerable beasts known to reside on the planet. Hmmm… It appears to have a full moon cycle of around thirty days," Vegeta noted, scanning through the records as a boring and undetailed wall of text was more engaging than staring at Nappa's face.

"I see, so Bardock had hoped to enlist his other son to his troupe of losers and then use the full moon to shake off any pursuers. That's if he even realized that we've been following them around since they last left Planet Vegeta!" Nappa laughed out to himself.

"That's true, Bardock's second son must be an even greater piece of trash than Raditz was due to being sent to such a far-off, pathetic planet and Bardock will get nothing from transforming against other Saiyans," Vegeta closed his eyes in disappointment. He didn't expect much from a low-class warrior such as Bardock and yet he was still very much frustrated by the lackluster strategy his prey displayed.

"Although, if they all gang up on us as Great Apes, it might get heated…" Nappa shrugged to himself, thinking out loud.

"Nappa, you dolt, a Saiyan's battle power is multiplied tenfold when they transform. To suggest that the lot of them would pose any challenge to us whatsoever in their transformed states is to say that they'd pose a challenge in their base forms. Are you threatened by a handful of low-class waste of Saiyan blood?" Vegeta fired a sharp glare toward the monitor, aiming it at his partner who became flustered at that suggestion.

"S-Sorry, Vegeta… I didn't think about that…" Nappa tried excusing himself. "Hmmm… Oh, look at that… What a hasty spaceship, I wonder where it's rushing off to. I wasn't aware this sector had such busy space traffic…"

Vegeta wanted to scold Nappa for trying to distract him but he did note the remarkably fast vessel as well. Not to mention the turbulence that it created from passing by them which shouldn't have been possible, except for cases of plasma turbulence. Still, there was no way for them to catch up to that vessel in Attack Balls.

"That cheeky bastard…" Nappa grumbled from the shakes and quakes in his own pod. "It better not be hurrying to Earth, for its own sake!"

* * *

A royal mixture of sharp colors blitzing over its head seemed to catch the Great Ape's attention. Before it could lash out and strike at the arriving Upa, the new Kami of Earth raised his hands up toward the artificial ball of energy over the head of the titan and clenched its fist, as if grabbing hold of it from a considerable distance afar.

The Great Ape roared and shook, trembling and wrestling against an invisible force as its size began to shrink down and reduce while a powerful crystalline aura imbued Upa. Yamcha and Puar stared at Kami looking mighty impressed by the way in which the planet's guardian dealt with something as colossal and significant as a Great Ape monster.

"How did you do that?" Yamcha wondered.

"Bulma said that destroying the moon would also reverse the transformation of the Great Ape. It appears that the same applies to removing the artificial moon from the sky and, seeing how this artificial moon is just a variant of a Ki Ball, I'm absorbing it. Bulma made it out to seem like these monsters must need a very specific amount of lunar light at a very specific frequency. Just absorbing a bit of this artificial moon appears to do the trick…" Upa explained himself.

"That's right! I managed to prevent the Saiyan from transforming by blocking off the Ki Ball's light!" Puar exclaimed.

"I guess I'd better get ready, you might be able of absorbing Ki but I'm still a more reliable martial artist than you, Upa. Let's see just how tough this final remaining Saiyan is…" Yamcha punched his own open palm, causing Puar some concern.

"Don't get cocky, Yamcha-sama, this must be the strongest Saiyan out of them all," Puar warned his lifelong friend.

"Hmmm… He appears to be in no condition to fight in his human form…" Upa observed as he directed his carpet down to the devastated battlefield.

"On the other hand… I'm glad he's all tuckered out…" Yamcha's fighting spirit quivered as evidenced by him shaking from the destruction all around him. "Wasn't this place supposed to be all glaciers, freezing ocean and blizzards? What happened to this place?"

"This location did indeed host a calamitous battle. It will take years to fix the planet. Those Saiyans do not appreciate the job of a Kami at all, makes it all the more pleasant to kick them off my planet," Upa observed as he took a sharp look at the beaten Saiyan before him.

"H-Huh… Look at this guy, what the heck's his deal!? He looks just like Goku!" Yamcha pointed at Bardock's semi-conscious body that seemed to be in so much pain that it overrode the usual haze of consciousness that a Saiyan went through after reverting from the titanic Great Ape transformation.

"Maybe they are related?" Puar wondered. "Goku would feel really down if he hurt his relative, probably. He grew to be great friends with Chayote, after all…"

"This is odd…" Upa's glance shifted around. "I do not seem to feel Goku's Ki anywhere. You guys take it from here, pick this guy up and take him to the God Temple. There is something that I need to check…"

"Huh…" Yamcha turned to Kami but Upa was no longer there when the martial artist turned his head in his direction. The sudden realization that he was in charge made Yamcha's jaw drop and it took plenty of plushy jabs from Puar to snap out of his trance and get Bardock's broken body onto the flying carpet and head to the God Temple.

"Hmm…" Upa leaned over a white, ethereal cloud and examined it. The poor soul wriggled and shuffled about, looking frightened by the fact that this odd young man was taking such an interest in it just after it suffered a tragic experience that sent the poor fellow to the waiting line to the Check-In Station in the first place.

"Ah! Upa!" a squeaky yet familiar voice reached the troubled Kami, the young man jumped up and ran up to the little cloud that yelled at him.

"Son Goku!?" Upa freaked out.

"Yo!" the soul seemed chipper for someone that was waiting to be filtered at the line to the Check-In station. "Sorry, I seem to have kind of died! I don't suppose you can help me out a little here…?"

Upa took his crossed tomahawks from his back and clanged them together, emitting a jolt of Ki that enveloped the soul of the unfortunate Saiyan and restored him to his body, albeit with a halo over his head. It was an ethereal accessory that greatly amused the Saiyan who kept swiping over his head in an attempt to smack if or, at the very least, touch it.

"So, the Saiyan ended up killing you…" Upa shriveled up. "That's bad!"

"Huh? Oh… Yeah, I guess… It's too bad, Chi-Chi's gonna be really mad!" Goku scratched his head. It took him a while and a half to realize that his wife was the least of his worries at the moment.

"That's not what I meant. It's really bad timing that you died now. I picked up more impending threats, just like the Saiyans that crash-landed today." Upa crossed his arms.

"More Saiyans!?" Goku freaked out. "Damn! They're probably really tough too. They might not be with my father either. This is so bad!" the recently deceased martial artist began trekking in place, almost as if he tried to burn enough calories to sport himself back to life. "Are you sure that nothing can be done about this?"

"Well… Korin did tell me he sent Yajirobe off to gather the Dragon Balls. With some luck, he'll be done before the Saiyans arrive but… I'd rather not ask the Divine Dragon to bring you back yet," Upa scratched his chin.

"Huh? Why not?" Goku made a pouty face. "The longer I'm dead, the madder Chi-Chi will get…"

"Well, if we use the Dragon Balls and bring you back now, then the Dragon Balls will turn to stone for a year, meaning we won't be able to bring back anyone that this new batch of Saiyans kill," Upa pointed out.

"Oh, that's right, that's good thinking, I guess…" Goku waved his lips about, wondering how he felt about this quandary.

"Our luck isn't completely rotten though, it seems like Chayote would arrive before the Saiyans," Upa nodded, having the entire battle plan all scoped out now in his head.

"Just what is the meaning of this!?" a gigantic, red ogre sporting a pair of impressive horns bawled over the two, shaking his fist over his head and scaring the pair that wasn't aware they've reached the front of the line already.


	117. Breaking the Bad News

With the blue and green marble entering the view on the porthole, Chayote slowed the ship down. She'd have arrived a few hours earlier if she didn't control the landing though she'd have just crashed on a random location and Bulma would have yelled her ears off about that. Plus, it wasn't as if Chayote didn't intend to blast off once this whole Saiyan crisis was over.

This was it, this was what Goku saw on Korin Tower all those years ago and, after this, there were no more crises on the horizon. It would be many years until Frieza's Army even stumbled across this sector and they'd still be hesitant to check this system as it didn't have all too many valuable resources at all. Those few valuable minerals and gases that it did have could have been found on remote moons all over the system so they'd never even need to check Earth.

The spaceship landed with a satisfying bump. Its mechanical legs bent up by the center but they bounced right back at it, almost as if they weren't compensating for a crazy trip across the entire galaxy just now. Chayote didn't waste any time, she ran out through the opening in the spaceship and looked around, sensing for any important Ki signatures that she couldn't pick up.

"That's Chi-Chi…" Chayote mumbled to herself, sensing a familiar flare far off to the east. "Muten Roshi…" she turned south. Where was everyone? Did they all get killed already? Then how come both Earth and West City appeared to be in perfect condition?

"Well, you finally learned to land properly…" Bulma crossed her arms with a biting look before erupting into joy and running up to the space-faring Saiyan and greeting her. "You might be too late though, the Saiyans are already beaten."

"Wait, what!?" Chayote flipped out. "You mean you didn't even need me in the first place!? Do you have any idea about the kind of journey I had?"

"Well, what Bulma-san said is not entirely correct…" a woman of long, bushy auburn hair appeared from behind Bulma and fixed her round glasses. "My drones have found the Saiyans unconscious in remote locations where your allies have confronted them. By all indications, I'd say that your comrades were victorious in their battle."

"This is Dr. Puri, she's a recent hire at Capsule Corp though her work with robotics and drone technology has been amazing. Honestly, if it wasn't for her stepping up, I'd have torn my beautiful hair out worrying long ago," Bulma deflated after introducing Chayote to the woman.

"Hmm… That's odd, I can't sense any Ki from you," Chayote examined the auburn-haired woman like a dog sniffing around a newly met object of interest.

"Oh, well… You know us, scientists. We aren't much in terms of fighting ability…" Dr. Puri chuckled. She did indeed look absolutely puny even by human standards. She did not lack height though her build was exceptionally slick to the point where a donut might have saved her life.

"I guess… Drones you said?" Chayote caved in, realizing that she likely wouldn't figure out why this woman was a complete hole in her Ki sensory. Even ordinary humans gave out a measly speck of a Ki signature whereas this woman lacked even such a blink of vital energy. If physical weakness truly was the cause of that, she'd have been unable to lift a feather.

"Yes, flying cameras that have adopted military protocols in avoiding detection and destruction. They're small and allow us to scan even a wild battlefield of the greatest martial artists without being damaged or destroyed. It is my greatest invention so far…" Dr. Puri nodded, looking quite proud of herself though she had every reason to be a little bit cocky about her fancy flying cameras.

"I figured that if you can't sense anybody's Ki and they truly have won the battle against the Saiyans, as Dr. Puri suggests, the Dragon Team have all went on to regroup at the God Temple. Who knows if they're just celebrating or if it's something more serious? If they truly are cheering each other, that's awfully reckless of them knowing that a handful of unconscious Saiyans are just scattered all across the planet," Bulma grunted while grinding her teeth exasperated.

"Not even my drone cameras can check-in on this God Temple location. Something smites them down before they break through the clouds…" Dr. Puri lamented.

"Alright, no use standing around, I'm off to the God Temple. Maybe somebody there can tell me what the hell happened. I mean, if I traveled across the galaxy to get here, may as well see everything through to the end even if I'm not needed," Chayote declared with a grumpy tone. She still needed to drop by the Korin Tower for some Senzu anyway. The journey had exhausted her so she'd not be anywhere near her best if she had to fight the Saiyans now.

* * *

"Sorry, sorry, no can do, I handed out all the Senzu there is to the rest. Gave Yajirobe a few for the trip too. Maybe Kami's got something that'll fix you up?" Korin shook his head frustrating Chayote even further. The Saiyan hopped over the rails and blasted off to the God Temple.

The moment she breached the magical barrier that prevented anybody from outside sensing Ki signatures that are on the God Temple Chayote realized that her visit would be interesting, to say the least. She sensed at least one massive Ki signature that she couldn't recognize and there was one that she could put a name to but one that had no reason to be there at all.

"It's Chayote!" Krillin pointed at the Saiyan completing her flying arc and landing onto the white tiles of the God Temple. Mr. Popo nodded his head in acknowledgment of her arrival, the rest appeared to ease up on the spot. Everyone in sight looked happy to see Chayote though it wasn't entirely because of the friendly relationship that the Dragon Team shared with one another.

"First things first, I'm beat, do you think you guys can spare some food or something?" Chayote scratched the back of her head with her left arm while her right patted down her own belly.

"Oh…" Krillin searched his pocket and pulled out a Senzu. He flicked it toward the Saiyan. Even though it tasted like seaweed that kept unfurling and expanding in mass when it went down, Chayote welcomed the return of her strength without the massive expenditure of time that it would have taken for her to eat and for Mr. Popo to prepare the amount of food needed to revitalize her. "My fight wasn't too tough so I didn't end up needing my Senzu. I was saving it for the next fight but if you need it then…" Krillin shrugged.

"The next fight?" Chayote repeated.

"This must be the fastest that things went tits up…" Yamcha sighed, scratching the back of his head.

"To think that we won the fight against the Saiyans but ended up in such a nasty situation regardless, we're glad that you're finally here, Chayote," Tenshinhan joined in on the sentiment with an approving nod.

"Okay, so can somebody brief me in already? What happened, where's Kakarot and why is Piccolo Jr. here and whose Ki signature is that?" Chayote pointed at inside the God Temple where she sensed a powerful Ki. To call it dangerous or powerful would have been to do so judging by the Earthling standards though the very presence of someone strong enough to make the human fighters have to try, more so – someone whom nobody has previously met, was the enigma to solve all by itself.

"The Saiyans came early. They attacked all of us individually as we were training all across the world, they were looking for Goku but they weren't sure which Ki signature belonged to him and who were just other strong warriors on this planet," Tenshinhan started the story, so far, Chayote could visualize it all clearly.

The Saiyans would have invaded wearing the scouters. Those scouters didn't tell much about specifics of battle power, only provided a reading of it. The usual tactic of recognizing other targets was to know the exact battle power of each ally and separate them that way or have one's entire squad wear scouters and communicate through scouter signals and readings rather than battle power scanners. Even then, all you'd see is the signal of a scouter and not any specifics about whom it belonged to. The only way to tell who it was you were communicating with was through voice communication. Still, if the scouters were destroyed or even damaged – even that method went out the window.

"We managed to defeat the Saiyans, some struggled more than others. The Saiyans have a frightening ability to trigger their Great Ape transformation at will, to form a ball of Ki in their hand that emulates the natural light of the full moon," Tenshinhan continued.

"I wasn't aware of such a technique, must be a new addition to the Frieza Army," Chayote noted.

"Krillin managed to beat his opponent before he even tried to transform, I managed to stop mine from transforming," Yamcha explained.

"One Saiyan we fought used some projection from inside of his pod to project the full moon and it triggered his transformation. It was a tough battle though with Upa's help we managed to win," Chiaotzu joined in, looking more chipper than his usual, apathetic self.

"I think Goku beat his opponent too, by the time that I and Muten Roshi found him, he and Chi-Chi had already won. We hurried to assist Piccolo, you should ask him for more details, nobody really tried talking to him ever since he showed up here. I don't know what's his deal is but he's freaking everyone out but we don't have much that we can do about it, without Goku… There's nobody that can beat him," Krillin shrugged, the anguish becoming clearer and clearer as he proceeded down where that train of thought took him.

"What do you mean without Kakarot? Where is he?" Chayote cut the surprised and tired act and turned grim serious.

"One of the Saiyans, Bardock, managed to transform into a Great Ape. Piccolo was too wounded so Goku told me to take him away so that the Dragon Balls didn't become inactive. Goku stayed to take the Great Ape all by himself…" Krillin butt his index fingers. He clearly lacked the stones to say what everyone had in their minds.

"Kakarot!? I couldn't name one person less prepared to fight a Great Ape, he's never had to defeat one!" Chayote began losing it. "He probably would just try hitting it until it stopped moving if he had to fight it!"

"Well… We're not sure how it happened, you'd have to talk to Bardock but… Goku died fighting him, by the time Upa reached them and forced Bardock back to normal, it was too late," Yamcha said what Krillin couldn't.

"What do you mean "talk to Bardock"?" Chayote turned her head to the God Temple. "You mean to tell me that he's still alive after killing Kakarot!?"

"Well, we think that's why Piccolo's here, he wants to kill Bardock but he's too weak to do that yet. We didn't heal him on purpose so that he doesn't start rampaging or do anything stupid but he's… He's a Namekian, you know. His powers are returning to him at an alarming rate so we're glad you're here," Tenshinhan explained.

"Yeah, okay, I can handle Piccolo but why is Bardock still alive though?" Chayote repeated.

"Well… He is Goku's father and… You should have seen him, Chayote. I don't think he wanted to kill Goku. He's a complete wreck, he doesn't talk, he doesn't do much of anything. He wasn't in control of himself when he became a Great Ape so none of us could kill him. We didn't give him a Senzu either, though, I don't think he'd have taken one even if we did offer him one. I think, at this point, Bardock wants himself dead more than anyone on this planet might want him dead," Krillin stepped up. Judging from how he advocated this decision, he was the one to make it.

Chayote should have known. She should have guessed that the Earthlings would lack the stones to do what needed to be done. That was why there were all those broken bodies of Saiyans scattered all across the world – they just beat them down and left them lying and beaten. She completely forgot the kind of mentality these guys had when it came to fighting since they have been so efficient in disposing of demons, something that was far less than a human.

Tenshinhan's arm touched Chayote's shoulder when she turned to the God Temple to blast Bardock into oblivion. When she turned back at them, all four of the Earthlings looked distraught and afraid but none of them seemed to be behind her in any capacity.

"We can bring Goku back, it's not final. Kami even contacted us and told us that he has made accommodations for Goku in the Otherworld and that Goku agrees that we should only bring him back after all the Saiyans are beaten," Tenshinhan pointed out.

"That's what we should worry about now – two more Saiyans are coming, Chayote. Let's just leave dealing with Bardock until after we deal with them," Yamcha pleaded.

"We tried telling Bardock that Goku can be brought back, just to make sure he doesn't kill himself or pull something stupid but… I'm not sure if he can even hear us right now. He's genuinely regretting what he did," Krillin joined in.

"Those Attack Balls…" Chayote looked away, recalling overtaking a pair of speeding Attack Balls more than a handful of hours ago. "That must be it. Those must be the Saiyan reinforcements. Good, they're not bringing any healing tanks with them."

"Healing tanks?" Chiaotzu wondered.

"It's the technology that Frieza Army uses to revitalize its injured soldiers. A tube filled with regenerative fluid that heals injuries in the span of a couple of hours. If we don't kill Bardock, we should at the very least kill his comrades. They'll be a constant threat and their powers will soar skyward after they recover and become empowered by Zenkai," Chayote explained.

"That would be a bad idea," Piccolo's voice shred into Chayote's skin, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up and prompting her to jump up and turn to the approaching Namekian face to face. "Bardock is unlike you or Son, his power escalates and his psyche becomes more and more berserk when his teammates get into trouble. When we started fighting, his Ki was nothing to scoff at but I was leagues above him, didn't even have to try that hard, but by the time the end of the fight came, he was taking on both me and Son at the same time and that's before he transformed into a Great Ape,"

"What are you doing here, demon?" Chayote hissed at Piccolo, jumping at his face, though still lacking more than a head-worth of height to measure up to him.

"I'm making sure that at the end of the day there's still a planet left for me to conquer," Piccolo replied. "Plus, I'm defective goods, remember? I'm as much Demon King Piccolo's reincarnation as I am Kami's. Maybe that's why I just can't force myself to bathe in all of your blood and ended up caring just a little bit about taking on those alien bastards."

Chayote had to admit, she could sort of buy into that explanation, given how the demons did sort of reject Piccolo from their ranks and Piccolo seconded the notion, showing almost as much disgust in their kind as Chayote had been fostering in her heart ever since Lord Slug's crew tortured her for what felt like entire years.

"Then there's not much that can be done," Chayote sighed. "The Saiyans are too close to Earth for us to be able to achieve anything by training. All we can do is wait for them to arrive and confront them before they do too much damage."

"There is one other thing," Krillin rubbed the back of his bald head. "You could try and convince Bardock to fight with us. If he's strong enough to hold off Goku and Piccolo at the same time and if he truly wants Goku back, he can't get that without the Dragon Balls, meaning that Earth needs to stay intact for that to happen."

"Absolutely not!" Chayote clenched her fists. "I'd rather pull his head off his shoulders myself!"

"Hmph… Look at you talking high and mighty when you exiled yourself to learn to control your rage better. Bardock isn't much different from you, he just lost control, you know." Piccolo mocked Chayote with a sly smirk. "By the way, how did that self-help expedition go? Can we count on you to not flip out and doom us all now?"

"Don't you dare think for a second that this is over between us. You're still just demon scum as far as I'm concerned. Just because some part of my body doesn't consider you as worthy of immediate obliteration as any other demon, doesn't make us allies," Chayote pointed at the Namekian as she stormed off toward the God Temple.

"Where's she off to?" Yamcha wondered.

"I think… That's where Bardock is sulking," Chiaotzu pointed out, his face becoming taken over by a feeling of impending dread as he voiced his realization.

"Don't tell me…" Krillin flipped out.

"Don't worry, Chayote won't be killing Bardock," Piccolo closed his eyes, looking perfectly calm and confident without dropping his grin. "Just like you, she wouldn't have it in her when she sees just how much like Son his father looks. Plus, I meant it when I told her how similar the two were. I think she understands what Bardock went through a bit better now. She's probably off to talk some sense into him,"

The rest of the Dragon Team appeared somewhat eased by Piccolo's statement. The time until the arrival of the second wave of Saiyans was about to run out like the blades of scissors crossing just inches short of the narrow, red thread separating their arrival from a brief intermission between all the fighting. A pair of crimson beams of light, flaming with ignition from entry into Earth's atmosphere cut through the night's sky and would soon light up the region they landed in with the inferno of their landing.


	118. Gourmet's Purification

"King Enma!" Upa jumped up upon being called out by the king of the ogres for stalling the line of souls that had to be processed.

"Kami, what is the meaning of this? You're lucky that neither Whis-san nor the Supreme Kai is here," King Enma showed his teeth both as a threatening gesture as well as a natural result of his cheer derived from the dumbstruck expression on the face of the newest deity in the universe.

"I've come to restore the body of this mortal. He is very special and I was not aware he died in the first place so I had to do so post-mortem, I apologize!" Upa bowed before King Enma making the king of the ogres ease up and begin picking his nose when Kami began boring him.

"If he's so special, how come you weren't aware when he died?" the giant mumbled to himself before standing up some to see Goku better from over the counter. "Ah, yes, I think I remember you. You came here to cash in Baba's Free-Return Ticket a few years ago, right?"

"It's been more than just a few years ago," Goku scratched the back of his head, looking significantly less awed by the massive king of the ogres than he was when he first laid eyes upon the universe's largest bureaucrat.

"Not to a judge of all who are dead and the king of all ogres!" King Enma pointed at himself with his thumb, looking boastful and as excited as ever to inspire awe in the eyes and hearts of mortals around him. "In any case, you're holding off the line. I hope you didn't get the bright idea to just restore this mortal to life, did you, Kami?"

"W-Well… Not yet, we shall be using the Earth's Dragon Balls for that eventually but… I've heard that King Kai is looking for a potential pupil to teach his supreme martial arts techniques. Given how Son Goku is now on the Otherworld, I've been wondering if he could give it a shot…" Upa asked the king of all ogres.

"Huh? King Kai, that grouch? Fine, if this guy can run through the Snake Way, there's no harm in him meeting King Kai. Hey, you, are you sure you wanna run through the entire Snake Way?" King Enma leaned over the table to look at Goku while he asked.

"Huh? I kinda don't really get what's going on but Upa said something about martial arts and I'm all about that!" Goku exclaimed in excitement. "Sure, I'll do it!"

"Alright, it's your afterlife that's at stake…" King Enma shrugged, "Now move it you two, don't hold the line."

"Goku, you must listen really closely, at the end of this path here lives King Kai. If you could see Kami as being the King of the World, King Kai is the King of All Worlds," Upa pointed out as he led Goku to King Enma's right, accompanied by a few puny ogres dressed in office attire and donning glasses.

"Huh? He's an even greater God than you!?" Goku wondered out loud.

"Oh yes! Much, much greater! He's greater even than King Enma!" Upa nodded a few times.

"You know, my hair isn't really obstructing my hearing, Kami!" King Enma glanced at Upa who froze into a popsicle and went pale. While Upa wasn't wrong about King Kai surpassing King Enma in the rank of divinity, King Enma would have rather not have heard about it in his proximity, especially not when another mortal near and could have filled his head with that which King Enma didn't want them to hear.

Upa made sure to accompany Goku to the Snake Way before continuing the explanation. The Snake Way was a long, narrow, and winding path of white marble, shaped after its namesake and was the only pathway guiding through vast fields of cottony, sunny clouds. Goku could only marvel at the sight with primal yells of excitement.

"Indeed, an impressive sight, isn't it? Legends state that this path is millions of kilometers long though its exact length remains unknown. It might even be longer than that as it is visible on the model of the Universe 7 that Whis-san gazes at, meaning that it is of meaningful enough length in the scale of the entire universe!" a blue office ogre pointed out, appearing to share his king's excitement in wowing the visiting mortals.

"This is amazing!" Goku shrieked out, taking a leap onto the serpent's head immediately and gazing into the horizons, seeing no end to the path.

"Goku!" Upa yelled out visibly irked. "You need to hear this! King Kai has been looking all across the universe for the next pupil to teach his esteemed martial arts techniques. So much so that he's been growing desperate and he might just accept you into his tutelage as long as you finish the dash across the Snake Way. I'd have advised you guys to try reaching out to him when you were preparing yourselves to face Piccolo Jr. but none of you were dead at the time and King Kai was far less vocal about his search for disciples."

"Those clouds look delicious!" Goku shrieked out, taking a giant leap with his arms and legs wide open to grab onto the cottony, lemon clouds below like they were a giant cake. A jolt of lightning from Upa's tomahawks covered him and dragged him across and back to the stand before the Snake Way.

"Goku! You went straight to Hell, I swear!" Upa scolded his dim-witted friend. "That's Hell down there, you can't stray off of the Snake Way or else you'll plummet to Hell and you'll have to spend your time there!"

"Hell?" Goku looked up, looking confused.

"It is… Where all the wicked souls go after death…" the office ogre pointed out, looking taken aback by the fact that a mortal could be this uneducated in the afterlife matters.

"So that's where everyone wants me to go when they shout "Go to Hell" and stuff…" Goku laughed out to himself, leaving Upa and the blue ogre shocked at his ignorance.

"Is this mortal from Earth, Kami?" blue office ogre pointed at Goku.

"He is a Saiyan…" Upa replied with a half-answer, wanting neither to lie to the Other World official nor admit that Goku, who didn't have a clue about most afterlife matters, was under his care. "Honestly, I thought he'd be more familiar with the Other World given how he trained with his grandpa for a few years in the Supreme Kai Realm."

"Alright!" Goku tightened his belt and took a valiant leap onto the Snake Way again. Looking onward with a face full of determination and grit.

"Remember, Goku, the sooner you get to King Kai, the more time you'll have to master his techniques…" Goku was gone before Upa could finish the sentence. His afterimage still lingered but his Ki was halfway across the horizon covering unfathomable distances in mere blinks.

"He is astounding!" the blue office ogre yelled out in amazement. "Dashed right off and barely raised a whirl down here! What ludicrous speed!"

"It's not his ability to make it to King Kai that bothers me," Upa shook his head, stroking his forehead as he turned away from the Snake Way and moved back to the Check-In Station from where he could teleport back to Earth and see to it that the Earth is adequately prepared for the looming Saiyan threat.

"This is nothing! I'll be at the end in no time!" Goku yelled out in excitement all to himself as the visages of the Snake Way and the same old cottony lemon clouds whizzed past him. A potent rumble and a quake of the Snake Way that almost made Goku lose his footing halted him in his path. The Saiyan threw his gaze left and right, wondering where the robust growl that shook the heavens might have come from.

"Food!" a dynamic howl came from somewhere deep down. Goku approached the edge of the Snake Way and looked down, using his right arm to try and cover up his face as if it could have helped him to gaze through the clouds.

"Yes, please!" Goku yelled back at the clouds, wondering if something was listening and would hand him food.

"Hungry!" a roar shook the heavens once more. This was the only area where Goku felt this overwhelming power rumbling. While he was sure that whatever caused this didn't just start yelling right now, he could only pick up on the rumbling once he moved into the vicinity of whatever this phenomenon was.

"Yeah, I'm starving!" Goku yelled down, using his hands as tunneling cups to channel his voice better, wondering if the creature in the clouds could hear him.

"I lament you, oh, cruel fate! Food everywhere yet nothing to sate my hunger!" a more eloquent howl proceeded to rip through the Other World from down beneath the clouds. Goku scratched his head.

"Upa said something about not falling off the road but I can fly… Plus, that thing said there's food everywhere in Hell…" Goku shrugged and vaulted off of the Snake Way, taking a plunge through the clouds and diving down under. Just as he made a noticeable distance plummeting down, he felt a powerful Ki emanating from down under. As he split the layer of cottony clouds between the Other World and Hell, Goku noticed the clouds growing thinner.

Once he emerged from the in-between layer and appeared in Hell, the stench utterly decimated Goku's nose, prompting him to pinch it immediately. Noticing the change in scenery with the surroundings appearing remarkably moody and sunken in the gloom, Goku looked up and noticed the lower levels of Hell being covered up by tar-black storm clouds that were the cause for this darkness covering the place.

"What is this reek!?" Goku shrieked out with a high-pitched voice as pinching his nose had transformed it. Once the Saiyan finally reached the bottom of his fall, he did not hit anything solid. Instead, his boots plunged up to his knees into the swampy bog.

It was only once the Saiyan became accustomed to the constant downpour from the skies and the swampy mire beneath his feet that he noticed the scarce scenery of trees that glistened in eternal sunlight even though the clouds obstructed them just as they did with everything else. The fruit of the tree was something Goku could recognize quite well though it wasn't something that one usually saw growing on a tree.

"Food!" Goku yelled out as he jumped at the nearest tree and tore chicken, cooked dinosaur thighs and handfuls of pure, white cheese that dissolved in his hand with stretchy goodness as he picked it from the tree and stuffed his mouth full of. The more Goku's eye reached into the horizon, the more delicacies he could notice in there. "This is great!" the Saiyan yelled out a cheerful declaration before a sob made him look back and face that which shook the heavens with its moans.

It was a massive blob of purple, mutated flesh. So vast and pudgy that his arms and legs were mere stubs that were just a part of the greater whole with just the feet and the hands being something more pronounced and standing out from the morbid mess of fat. One of the mutant's eyes was bloated out while the other looked relatively normal and cried with human tears while the rest of him thrashed about.

"Oh, it's you…" Goku waved. "What are you doing in Hell, did you die too?"

"Hell? Yes, this is Hell… But it is my Hell, the Hell of King Gurumes. What are you doing here, did you come to torment me more?" the mutant bellowed in a miserable voice begging for an end which was the only thing that he could not have received in any dimension of the Otherworld.

"Nah, I heard your whining and I thought that you were giving out free food…" Goku laughed out as he took the chance to stuff his mouth full in between the breaks when he had to speak.

"You fool! Yes, take all of it, all of this food, and choke on it. Can you not taste how bland it is? How putrid?" King Gurumes shook his fist over his head. The mutant only had one free arm as most of him sunk into the mire and had to perpetually swim out every four minutes or so in order that his entire body did not submerge under the bog. "As horrible as the mire I've tried drowning myself in, I swear. If only I could taste some delicacies with actual taste once again…"

"Huh? You don't like all this stuff?" Goku looked around. "Is it okay if I take it with me then on to the Snake Road?"

"What's that? You think you're leaving!?" King Gurumes laughed his lungs out in what might have been the first genuine laugh that he had in however many years of torture down in Hell that he'd spent. "If we could have left, I'd have left long ago. I can only drown in the bog and eat this raw and bland waste off of the trees."

"Oh, I guess you can't fly, huh?" Goku shrugged and tilted a giant sash made out of an oversized leaf that was filled to the brim with enough food to feed an entire army of people. "Okay, take care then," the Saiyan saluted his old acquaintance that he had once stopped in early childhood and took off. He did not fly very high up.

"What the!?" Goku grunted in pain when the sticky goop from the mire appeared to hold him in place as a membrane of something smelly and sweat-like only allowed him to pull off of it a few meters. No matter how much strength Goku mustered up, not even the blaze of his Hot-Red Mode helped him.

"See, you fool, this place is indeed Hell and nobody can escape Hell. Though I suppose it isn't half as bad for you. This place has been designed to torment me and make me wish for death. After living my life as a glutton I am now merely a glutton for punishment. The magic of Hell is mighty, it even restored the Curse of the Blood Rubies in my body with no Blood Ruby is sight. It's like this place knows how to cause the most torment to each of its inhabitants," King Gurumes lamented and cursed his fate.

"I dunno seems to me like there could be way worse places to be stuck in…" Goku shrugged. "There's ample space to practice martial arts and this whole place is nothing but yummy food growing on trees…"

"Yummy? What would a casual such as yourself fathom in delicacies? I've engaged my voracious appetite in all of this realm's offerings. Even though my entrapment is worse than yours, I can muster up anything by just thinking of it and despite having spent my entire life gormandizing, I cannot think of a single delectable thing to eat. Food all around me but all of it just fluff of culinary degradation! Waste of space and products," King Gurumes stuck out his tongue in disgust when looking across the endless fields of magnificent dishes and sinful little snacks alike.

"Hmm?" Goku leaned down and picked up an apple from the mire and dragged it over his gi before examining its yellow and somewhat pummeled look. "Did you ever try this?" he wondered. "It's not on any trees and, weirdly enough, it's the only thing that actually belongs on one…"

"Hmph… Might as well eat my own shit and drink it down with the bog. Your uncultured appetite insults me!" King Gurumes submitted in his struggle against the bog and submerged up to the base of his chest in the mire. "This horrid fruit is the first thing I grasped for upon opening my eyes in this miserable abode. That was before I realized that I was in control of what mass dragged the branches of these trees to the ground. I merely thought these trees looked like apple trees, I assure you, I've not sinned against my indulgent nature, I merely mistook myself as someone that was still alive."

"So, you've thrown it away? How 'bout you try it? Can't know if you like it 'till you do…" Goku extended his hand looking serious. He would shove this discarded apple down this mutant's throat if he had to.

"B-But it's so… Yellow, mushy, and… Beaten… So unseemly!" King Gurumes shivered from the very thought of taking a subtle bite of this repugnant apple.

"Yeah, that's because you threw it away and let it drown in the dirt for so long!" Goku objected. "Eat it up! Before I find a way out of this place, I'll force you to eat every single thing in this place so that you don't waste any of this food!"

"Bah, the sooner I am done with this…" King Gurumes swam out with his left hand and pushed his body out of the mire, defying the laws of physics and answering only to the laws of the accursed realm he inhabited. With quivering fingers the glutton grabbed the apple and shoved it all into his face, covering his unsightly frame in apple mush in the process. "Hmm… I have missed this taste. Yes… I do believe I've only eaten this once… But is of no use trying to replicate that miracle. I am now once more cursed by the hunger of the Blood Rubies and there's not a single ruby in sight, my craving will never subside as long as the clock of eternity keeps ticking."

An overwhelming shine took over King Gurumes' body. The frightened mutant wrestled against the ethereal gleam but could only fight the gravitational pull that dragged him deeper into the bog. The obese abomination began shrinking down, its deformed features began taking a rounder, more generalized appearance while King Gurumes became fluffy and round, like a little, shiny, white cloud.

"What's this? Yes… I feel the end, at long last. But I am not afraid, I am, more than anything, calm…" Gurumes exclaimed overcome with glee as his speech turned to unintelligible squeaking. The ethereal cloud began rising higher and higher, heading straight for the upper layer of Hell. Mustering all of his remaining strength Goku took a bashful leap and grabbed hold of the cloud's tail before the disembodied soul of what once was King Gurumes blitzed in an instant right back to the Check-In Station.

"What's this? Someone from Hell has purified themselves of sin!" a red office ogre exclaimed pointing at King Gurumes soul. "Hurry, send it with the next batch to the Reincarnation Machine!"

"It appears that we've got a stowaway too…" a blue ogre approached Son Goku who was still writhing from the space-time bending trip he took while ahold of a purified soul sent from Hell for reincarnation. "That's odd… Wait, I know you!"

"Yo!" Goku jumped back up on his feet and greeted the familiar blue office ogre with glasses. "I kinda jumped off of the Snake Way and fell to Hell. I'd like to get back to it if that's okay."

"S-Sure but… Y-You'll have to start all over again…" the blue office ogre fixed his glasses and wiped his sweaty forehead while his red colleague guided the purified soul to the batch of souls headed for reincarnation. You're actually inside King Enma's middle drawer right now, head that way, and push against the mahogany wall."

"Thank you!" Goku saluted the blue office ogre while jogging in place and promptly took off toward the direction where the blue ogre pointed him toward.

It only took a light ram for Goku to bust King Enma's drawer open. The pink king of all ogres jumped up in surprise when his drawer busted open and Goku leaped out and dashed over his table. The judge of the dead ground his teeth at first, ticked off by Goku meddling in his affairs once again but then sighed realizing that it couldn't have been helped since Kami gave this meddlesome soul its body back.

"Yo! It's me, Son Goku, again. I kinda got lost so I'm gonna go back onto the Snake Way if that's okay by you, King Yemma!" Goku laughed out to himself.

"It's King Enma, dammit!" King Enma pounded his table but Goku jumped off of it to avoid the quake. Using the commotion to dash to the room leading to the Snake Way again. "Tell me, Saiyan, do you truly believe that you can run all the way to the end of the Snake Way? I was the only one in the Otherworld able to do that, you know…"

"Sure, it's no big deal. I'll be at the end in no time at all 'cause now I know the way so I can fly to where I jumped off," Goku chuckled, amusing himself in the process.

"J-Jumped off?" King Enma's eye twitched when Goku ran off without waiting for the king of all ogres to confirm Goku resuming his trip. "Just what kind of monster did Kami unleash upon us?"


	119. Divine Comedy

Goku's image flashed and materialized in a singular sonic shriek. The Saiyan had barely noticed that the end of the Snake Way was before him and that the tail signified that the only path onward for him would have also led him plummeting back down to Hell. With a baffled look, Goku scanned the massive array of clouds in front of him before the idea dawned on him to look up.

And there it was. A tiny, green planet with a house, what seemed like a garage and a lone, round path that went right around it. It was quite high up though Goku didn't feel like it would have inconvenienced him at all. He had dashed through much vaster distances in one leap before. Even traveling the very Snake Way that got him to this place. In a blink, Goku vanished from the tail end of the Snake Way.

A dancing monkey turned its head and spent a fair couple of minutes staring at Goku with a blank look before approaching the Saiyan with the same, dance-like strut. Goku scratched his temple, wondering what this was about. It was only now that it dawned on the young man that there was not really a signifier that told him that this indeed was King Kai's tiny planet so he very much might have ended up on another curious sightseeing detour.

"Are you King Kai?" Goku pointed at the monkey. Looking interested in the finger pointing its way, Bubbles grabbed Goku's wrist and bit his index, forcing the Saiyan to jump back and howl in pain while he shook his hand to ease the pain. "You're no ordinary monkey, that's for sure. Got some speed and bite to you…"

"Hey, hey… Who's raising this ruckus here?" a tired voice came from the little house which might have been just about the only notable attraction to the place, alongside the garage that belonged to it and stood right beside the house. A short, broad-shouldered, cricket-like blob of light blue skin emerged from the house. One side of its teashade sunglasses tilted upward so that the being could rub its tired eyes though Goku couldn't get a glimpse at the eye of this curious thing.

"Yo! I'm Goku! Are you King Kai's servant?" Goku introduced himself before pointing at Bubbles while still keeping his gaze fixed on to the emerged blue-skin elder in a black, oriental robe.

"Servant? I am King Kai, Bubbles here is my pet and my friend," the blue-skinned elder nodded as if he had to affirm this truth to himself in addition to clearing it up for Goku. "I'm not sure why you'd have thought Bubbles to be the great King Kai. You should stop… Monkeying around…"

King Kai covered up his mouth as he began cringing, barely able to withhold the laughter at his own silly pun. Goku's face shriveled up like a raisin as he struggled to comprehend what was so funny but, never being one to trouble himself with confusing things for too long, he shrugged it off and ran up to King Kai, teeming with hype.

"Hey, hey, Upa said that you were this amazing martial arts master and that you were looking for pupils. Could you then maybe train me while I'm dead?" Goku wondered, already beaming with excitement and cheer as if King Kai had accepted his request.

"Hmph… So it was Kami that allowed you to keep your body after death, was it? Well then, mind if I clear that up with him?" King Kai wondered, leaning at Goku as if he had some suspicions about him.

"That's gonna take a really long time! It'll take years for you to run the whole Snake Way with those short feet," Goku complained. "If it's really that big of a deal, I can carry you all the way back to King Enma and he'll call Kami for you."

"There will be no need for that, amusing as that might be," King Kai chuckled, fixing his shades as he whipped his antennae forward. Goku sensed a faint Ki-based signal rippling through space from the tip of King Kai's antennae. "Hey! Kami! This stiff guy just arrived on my planet, some Goku guy, he says that you sent him here to train."

King Kai stood there for a brief moment, Goku assumed that Upa had been talking to King Kai somehow through his mind. It seemed really confusing though the concept of learning a similar communication technique made Goku a bit pumped, even if he couldn't quite figure out any immediate uses for such a technique on the fly.

"I see, well then, he might be one of the Earth's strongest and I might be desperately short on apprentices but I will still test him as I see fit," King Kai concluded and tilted his head up to stare at Goku with a strict expression on his face.

"That's amazing! You can just contact anybody with those antennae of yours?" Goku wondered, pointing at the oversized appendages that hung bent up in an arc.

"That's right, anybody in the entire universe and even some places beyond just our universe, the very macrocosm that encompasses our universe too," King Kai nodded, looking mighty proud of his own telepathic abilities and somewhat softened up to Goku with the martial artist thinking his abilities amazing. "You might have a sweet tongue, mister, but you will still have to pass my test. I have some amazing zingers to teach you, both in comedy and martial arts, and I won't reveal my best humdingers to just any country hick, you see!"

"Hm? A test?" Goku wondered.

"That's right, first of all, I will need to know if you, someone who grew up on Earth, will even be capable of taking my grueling training. You might have been able to hide it quite well, but the gravity of this planet must feel intense for you, so you will have to be able to catch someone who lives around it, someone like Bubbles so that we know that you've got the heavy kicks…" King Kai continued to postulate before covering up his mouth again and beginning to spray through his lips. As if prompted by the old martial arts master, Bubbles ran off to the other side of the tiny planet and began dashing around as wild as only a dancing monkey could pull off.

"You may begin whenever you…" King Kai was about to inform Goku that he could have started at any moment though Goku vanished in his sight and re-appeared with Bubbles in his hands in an instant. King Kai's jaw dropped and his shades began hanging very uneasy over his tiny nose, dangling close to revealing his enigmatic eyes underneath. The martial arts master quickly regained his composure and corrected them however, taking a more dignified pose and closing his jaw at once.

"That was easy, the Room of Spirit and Time feels very similar to this planet and I've trained there a whole bunch!" Goku grinned while holding the struggling monkey in his hands.

"I see…" King Kai breathed out through his mouth. "In any case, while your body might be ready for the trials ahead, your mind might be anything but. If I am to declare you a worthy inheritor of my prized martial arts techniques, I will have to see if your wit is as sharp as your speedlines."

"Huh?" Goku scratched his head while King Kai continued to cringe at his clever wordplay.

"I'll have to hear a pun from you that can make me laugh. A comedic nugget worthy of my attention," King Kai explained with a grumpy tone when his self-supposed brilliance smashed against a brick wall in Goku.

"A pun? What's that?" Goku wondered.

"You know… Why do you think I wear sunglasses? It's because all of my students are just too bright!" King Kai raised his index finger as if he was about to teach Goku an important life lesson but it served to only leave the Saiyan more stumped.

"I… I don't quite get it…" Goku admitted in embarrassment.

"What the matter, don't you like skiing at all!?" King Kai shook his hands over his head, desperate to hammer the concept into Goku's brain but the Earth-raised martial artist was just in over his head with this one. "Tsk, forget it, what's the use of a photographic memory if you can't develop it?" King Kai crossed his arms and looked away, cringing to himself on an occasion as he thought of his own unleashed zingers.

"Can't you just show me your techniques? All that pun stuff doesn't really seem all that important to fighting, maybe I'll get it better as we go on?" Goku asked.

"Forget it, you're as sour as a spider…" King Kai cringed to himself before walking away and looking up. He appeared to have completely lost all interest in Goku. "If you like joyrides you can stay, I could use a driving companion but I will not teach you martial arts, not now, not ever. I could never entrust my martial arts techniques to such a stifferson. I don't want a boring wife, I want a star."

"Seriously!?" Goku freaked out and deflated. "Man… To think that I got all the way up here to learn from the heavenly master of martial arts only to be stumped by some weird words… Wait a second…"

Goku jumped up and ran up to King Kai, turning him around and shaking him by his shoulders, beaming with excitement. Almost as if the shiniest of all zingers was about to flow off of his tongue.

"You can contact anyone with your antennae, right?" Goku asked. "Contact them with your mind, that is?"

"That's not a… Oh… You were asking seriously, yes, yes I can, why?" King Kai wondered.

"There's someone really smart with words that you might be able to teach. A talented, budding martial artist too though he's still alive, do you think you could teach them?" Goku inquired.

"Huh? I mean… If they can make me laugh and can handle the gravity of this planet, sure…" King Kai nodded.

"Okay, I need you to contact Kami then, I'll want him to bring someone here," Goku nodded to himself as his confidence returned to him.

The lemon-colored clouds underneath the King Kai's planetoid began bubbling and whirling as they turned black. Crackles and tiny jolts of electricity ran over their peaks before a solid thunderbolt formed and smashed against the southernmost pole of the planet, leaving a trio of companions stranded on King Kai's planet and looking around it.

"Is this it?" Chi-Chi looked around as if she expected a demon to jump out at her from any corner of the tiny place.

"It is, I've never been here and I didn't even think to teleport Goku here because King Kai would have refused to train anyone that didn't run the Snake Way properly first," Upa nodded.

"There!" little Gohan pointed at the western edge of the planet where, from the horizon, a pile of smoke was beginning to form as something sped right at the curious array of travelers that moved to King Kai's planet from the God's Temple.

A red 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Hardtop screeched as it came to a halting and sudden stop. King Kai alongside Goku jumped out of the car and approached the travelers. King Kai nodded his head at the new Kami whom he had not yet gotten the chance to meet since Kami took over from the old in greeting, Upa bowed before his superior, looking beyond intimidated to be on his planet.

"So, this is the boy then?" King Kai looked at Gohan who looked petrified of the blue-skinned elder and hid behind his mother's skirt. Both Chi-Chi and Gohan looked awkward in their movements though their strength allowed them to maintain some decent control over their movements. The concept of greater gravity was a novelty for Gohan to the little boy continued to tumble and wobble as he walked while Chi-Chi looked like she knew these conditions well though just hadn't experienced them for a while.

"Yeah, Gohan is really smart, I'm sure he'll get your pun stuff and knock you off your shoes with it!" Goku gave his son a thumb up as he approached Chi-Chi and pulled Gohan from behind his mother's skirt and placed him on his shoulder.

"Just what do you think you're doing here, Goku-sa!?" Chi-Chi roared out, rearing her teeth like a wild puma. "How dare you get yourself killed right now, at such a crucial time of our son's development!? Did you intend on leaving him to grow up some little wussy, without a father? Just how am I supposed to reel him back from deviant ways when he grows stronger and keep him focused on becoming a well-rounded adult?"

"It's alright, Chi-Chi, my dad ended up killing me by accident. The others are gonna gather the Dragon Balls and bring me back. It's actually really good that you came. I didn't think about it, but we can all train here together and raise Gohan here until I'm brought back to life," Goku stroked Gohan's head as he continued to goof around with his son at the same time as he was fending off the well-deserved flack from Chi-Chi about getting careless.

"My planet isn't a hotel, you know. Also, I never agreed to train anyone that didn't make me laugh," King Kai reminded Goku that he was getting quite carried away with his plan.

"That's fine. You said that I could stay even if I didn't plan on training. You can just train Gohan while we continue to train and raise him as his parents," Goku answered.

"That's right, you old geezer, you didn't plan on kidnapping our child and training him without our supervision, did you!?" Chi-Chi turned her ire to King Kai who just shook his hands out in front of him, flabbergasted at how quickly the focus of the woman's wrath turned to him. He then caved in and deflated from the pressure.

"Fine, if your little boy can pass my test, I'll show him my techniques and whether he chooses to pass them down to you in the process, that's his own business. You two can stay and oversee his training, make sure he eats right and behaves, and whatnot…" King Kai caved in. "But that's still a very big if…"

"If I may be excused, there is a big battle brewing on Earth. I might be needed to confront the Saiyans," Upa butt into the conversation.

"Ah… The Saiyans are causing Earth more trouble then? That's too bad. I was never the one for such nasty measures but perhaps Frieza would have been better off controlling those brutes with a stricter hand in the past…" King Kai pondered out loud.

"Yes, though we have some of our own to assist us. Somehow, even the foul Piccolo who has once strived to take over the Earth now fights alongside us to protect it though. These are odd times and that is exactly why I must be there on Earth to protect it," Upa explained.

"Very well, Kami, you might leave," King Kai nodded without paying much attention to the rising beam of sizzling lightning that boomed Kami away from his little planet and back to his own domain. Once this business was over, King Kai turned for little Gohan who had begun getting a bit used to the place and even began chasing after Bubbles in some odd game of tag, despite still tripping and fumbling over himself once in a while.

"Careful, Gohan, all of your clothes are back home and we could not be any further away from Mt. Paozu right now!" Chi-Chi asked that her son was more careful and didn't get dirt all over his Hanfu-style uniform. Gohan nodded and patted his top to dust it off and wipe any traces of dirt left over from his stumbles.

"What an amazing child!" King Kai observed, "Barely even a minute here and already chasing after Bubble like he's grown up in augmented gravity."

"That's right, we've trained little Gohan a little bit so that he grows up a rounded up young man. Smart, well-behaved, and strong. Everything that the magazines say a man needs to be…" Chi-Chi nodded her head in affirmation of King Kai's observations.

"Yeah, Gohan is a great deal stronger than I was in his years…" Goku laughed out. "He's a great deal smarter too because he's hitting those books when he's not training. Go ahead, Gohan, do a pun for King Kai so that he can teach you martial arts."

"T-Teach?" Gohan looked up at his father, intimidated.

"Yeah," Goku nodded. "This is King Kai, he's a heavenly master of martial arts. The only way he'll teach you is if you manage to catch Bubbles and make him laugh with some pun-thing."

"B-But… Father is teaching me martial arts…" Gohan sobbed in a whiny voice, looking a bit scared of the blue-skinned shorty with cricket-antennae as many little boys his age would have been.

"That's right, but King Kai knows way amazing martial arts that not even your dad knows! This is your chance to learn martial arts that nobody in the universe actually knows. You know, nobody except your dad and King Enma ran all the way here over the Snake Way," Goku pointed out. This prospect of learning something that nobody had ever seen before appeared to drive some new life into the young kid as he began pumping his little fists and a tiny smile began wriggling its way up to his face.

"Oh, that's right, I guess you'll have to run all the way through the Snake Way too…" Goku approached Gohan and hoisted him up underneath his armpit as he prepared to dash all the way back to the beginning of the Snake Way, freaking out both Chi-Chi and King Kai.

"E-Enough! That's enough, Goku!" King Kai yelled out. "That's fine, he doesn't need to do that, you've traveled the Snake Way and I'm sure the boy could do it eventually too. Let's not subject him to it though, just this once, I'll train little Gohan if he can make me laugh and he can chase Bubbles during his playtime. He has playtime, right?"

"I guess we can squeeze in some thirty-minutes of that, if necessary…" Chi-Chi crossed her arms looking bemused. "After all, he won't be wasting that time, it seems."

"Alright, Gohan, go ahead, make King Kai laugh, I know you can!" Goku put his son on the ground and hurried him ahead toward the elder martial arts master.

"Umm… You like puns, right, sir?" Gohan looked up while he butt his fingers together, still anxious about the entire premise of his life flipping over on itself in a snap.

"Correct, puns illustrate a mature and witty mind. A sharp intellect of premiere martial artist that is worthy of receiving my training. While your father isn't quite western style but he's still strange-looking…" King Kai covered up his mouth while he chuckled at his own pun.

"Ummm… I see… The futon was blown away," Gohan mumbled out.

"Nice try… You can't get me with that one. It's a classic, overused, dragged down and under… It's the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of a pun," King Kai continued to cringe but covered up his mouth and pressed his arms over his cheeks while he convulsed in a hopeless attempt to restrain laughter.

"I see, that's the reason why you didn't laugh. It's a good reason…" Gohan nodded his head, looking happy.

"Good reason!?" King Kai finally burst. "Good reason… He says… Honestly!"

"Hm… That's a nice tree over there. Is it a pear tree? No… There is no pear…" Gohan pointed at a tree further to the north prompting King Kai to fall and begin rolling on the paved road in a total guffaw.

"There is… No pear… What a killer! A regular comedian!" King Kai couldn't control himself.

Chi-Chi turned to Goku while the two parents shared a smile. The wife pressed her head against her husband's shoulder, observing as Gohan proceeded to exceed in his comedic test as he had begun enjoying the comedic massacre that he was enacting upon the ancient martial arts master and continued to torture King Kai's waist with a relentless stream of puns.

"I still honestly don't get it..." Goku admitted quietly to his wife. "This pun stuff, that is."


	120. Confused Loyalties

"Holy… You really do look like Kakarot." Chayote mumbled to herself once she approached Bardock who sat by the temple wall, sulking in the shade. Seeing him so somber and poignant made the Saiyan wonder how she had ever counted on punching this guy in the face in the first place.

"Kakarot…?" Bardock looked up, his face still looked mournful though a meager shade of surprise colored the deep blue canvas.

"Yeah, I'm a Saiyan too," Chayote sighed and rolled her eyes, realizing that she'd have to explain that whole thing to the mourning and self-loathing father. When she thought of Goku's father as this looming threat to be avoided, she never imagined him to be capable of something so human and reductive as self-pity.

"You… How?" Bardock mumbled to himself.

Chayote extended her hands to the side and let her tail flap freely in his sight. It was one accessory of her heritage that she felt too proud of to get rid of, unlike Son Goku, so part of her loved showing off her tail to a fellow Saiyan who understood its significance and must have shared the pride in their mutual upbringing.

"Don't mind my clothes, those are Babarian, I ruled Planet Babari as sort of a queen before coming here. Anyway, have the Earthlings explained what the Dragon Balls are? We're going to bring Kakarot back to life so you can stop writhing here and feeling sorry for yourself and be useful by helping us fight the other Saiyans," Chayote said in a tough tone.

"The Dragon Balls… I've heard the Earthlings mentioning it from time to time. Can they really bring a person back to life?" Bardock wondered.

There was a very iffy problem with explaining what the Dragon Balls were to a Saiyan. Saiyans worked hand in hand with Lord Frieza and while Chayote felt confident in her current strength to fend off most Saiyans that she could recall encountering, not even in her wildest dreams did Chayote ever see herself standing in front of Lord Frieza in defiance of the tyrant.

"Yes. When all seven of them are gathered and a password is said, a dragon appears. If you perform a special handshake with it and wink the right way – it realizes the deepest desire you might have," Chayote decided to tell the truth where it was useful to her and embellish a thing or two around the full picture just in case Bardock would become an enemy once again.

"Then we have to collect them. I can be the one performing the ritual, in case none of you want it hard enough. You may laugh at me, as a Saiyan, but I didn't mean to kill Kakarot," Bardock gave Chayote a demeaning look, thinking that she'd be more akin to following the classical attitude of most Planet Vegeta warriors about familial bonds and meaningless attachments.

"You didn't?" Chayote raised an eyebrow.

"No, I just thought he was lying to himself about being close with all these Earthlings and this planet. I turned into the Great Ape because I thought he'd become the Great Ape too, just like me, but… Somehow… He had lost his tail here on Earth," all life seemed to evaporate from Bardock's eyes when the Saiyan recalled his meeting with his son. He couldn't bear it to look Chayote in the eyes either, choosing to instead try and stare a hole into the cold, stone staircase further from him that led to the outer area of the God Temple.

"Yeah, I can relate to that. Kakarot is such a softie and he used to be such a puny weakling as a kid that I nearly ended up killing him myself a few times during our training," Chayote shrugged.

"You… You take my son's life so bluntly as if it's some meaningless thing." Bardock growled.

"Sorry, I guess life just doesn't seem the same when some of us have been brought back to it from the Otherworld once already. I, for one, came back without the aid of the Dragon Balls, believe it or not," Chayote smirked. "Though the Dragon Balls are essential if Kakarot is to come back to life and if those other Saiyans destroy the Earth – that will be impossible."

"The other Saiyans?" Bardock's gaze widened in fearful shock.

"You didn't have reinforcements waiting on standby, I take it?" Chayote sighed. "What are the odds that two parties of Saiyans would discover this faraway, useless rock outside Frieza Army space?"

"It's no coincidence at all…" Bardock stood up and stared off at a blank point in the distance. "We must have been followed."

"You mean some pair of Saiyans decided to steal the glory of your kills from under your nose? Doesn't quite sound like something that a Saiyan would do, maybe some low-class thug, but these guys have some wild Ki. I'd imagine that they are the Saiyan elite." Chayote crossed her arms.

"King Vegeta… That bastard! He must have been on to us. We were pushing it with each day that we've postponed our coup and it seems like our luck had run out. Even if we did eliminate every warrior on this planet, it's likely that these guys would have attacked us and wiped us out," Bardock clenched his fists. "You said there were two of them?"

"That's right, I saw two Attack Balls on my way to Earth and right now I feel a pair of powerful Ki incoming somewhere near North City," Chayote nodded.

"Then it might not be King Vegeta… It is more than possible that it was Frieza himself that discovered our plot to overthrow King Vegeta. The Saiyans coming down here are none other than Nappa and Prince Vegeta, Frieza's own lapdogs," Bardock's face turned sour in wrath. For good reason too, evidently, his plot to overthrow King Vegeta had just poofed into smoke with the revelation that Frieza himself knew about it.

It wasn't entirely clear why, given how much visible hatred Lord Frieza had for the Saiyan race whenever he appeared in person on Planet Vegeta, but the space tyrant had a liking to the race and was quite protective of them in general. Most Saiyans believed that while Frieza was rude and brutal to the Saiyans, he still thought highly of their potential to accomplish great things for him and that was why he tolerated the Saiyans despite some deeper, more personal distaste for the entire warrior race.

"You plan to overthrow King Vegeta… Why?" Chayote wondered. She herself still felt more than just a soft spot for her king and would have done his bidding, depending on the content of his request, if he appeared before her and demanded it, despite not being under his direct control for over a decade now.

"You're a loyalist at heart? I can't say I blame you, I myself used to respect King Vegeta a great deal back in the day. But that was before he himself became weak and began relying on Frieza. It used to be the Saiyan way to confront adversity, challenge it, and overcome through punching it with ever-increasing strength until the wall in our way toppled down into rubble. Now the puny king just asks Frieza to blast that wall for him and whines like a bitch when he doesn't get his way. Our entire race rots with our bitch king. I don't really care about ruling it, but I want something to change." Bardock explained with a more serious expression. "That is why I want to ask you to leave Prince Vegeta to me."

"I've got no problem with that," Chayote shrugged.

"Hmph… I'm not sure when it was that you left Planet Vegeta, but it seems that the wobbly-legs-way of our king has rubbed off on you too. No self-respecting Saiyan would have denied themselves a challenge like that," Bardock smirked as he began examining what remained of his armor and wristbands.

"Are you being pissy about me agreeing with you?" Chayote growled in irk.

"Just making an observation… I'm actually overjoyed about it," Bardock chuckled to himself. "Any other day our squad would have fled in fright from the little prince. The last we've heard of him, his power level was well over 20 000, that was a few years ago too. I wouldn't be shocked if he'd be able to wipe the floor with even Frieza's two main cronies if he got especially whiny and hurt about his master not throwing him enough bones."

"Frankly, I'm not very sure what the power level of 20 000 means to me anymore," Chayote shrugged. "I haven't measured the strength of my enemies in power levels for too many years. Maybe it's something impressive and maybe it's just something I'd consider a punching bag. I won't be able to say until I get to punch it."

"Now you're talking like a Saiyan," Bardock smiled through the beaming, violent wickedness leaking from the rest of his expression. The two Saiyans left the God Temple together, walking alongside one another before Piccolo turned his nose up in a display of his resentment of the recovered Saiyan.

"Bardock is going to help us fend off the Saiyans. He understands that the Earth needs to stay intact in order for his son to come back to life," Chayote pointed at the half-naked Saiyan behind her, Piccolo reared his sharp fangs before raising his hand up. While the elevating Ki signature in his body would have indicated a mean to attack the Saiyan, the overall level of power he was showcasing didn't suggest that he truly meant to injure, maim or kill Bardock.

It was not a Ki blast that left Piccolo's hand but instead a golden gleam of a Ki beam emanating from his bent fingers that surrounded Bardock in an ethereal, glowing aura. The golden shine flashed once in bright light and once it settled down Bardock's armor was restored. The Saiyan patted his armored chest, examining the material.

"It's not as tough as the original…" he observed. "I guess not even Namekian sorcery can duplicate Saiyan technology."

"Hmph, I don't want you to catch a cold and die. You seeing your son again in the Otherworld is the last thing I want to happen," Piccolo spoke with resentment. "I know how sensitive and frail you alien types are to Earth's diseases…"

"You do realize you're an alien too, right, Namekian?" Bardock smirked at his green-skinned rival only for Piccolo to turn his head in dismissal.

"Maybe the Nameless Namekian once was an alien but a feeble-minded simpleton like you wouldn't comprehend what I am. I'll say it once and I hope I'm understood, I am the reincarnation of the Demon King Piccolo and the only reason we'll be fighting the Saiyans together is that I want the Earth for myself to rule but also, just a little bit, because I enjoy the thought of crushing your kind," Piccolo hissed.

"Just how on Earth did we end up fighting alongside so many of our past enemies?" Tenshinhan sighed, "Then again, I am the one to talk…"

"Enemies or not, we share a common goal – to protect the Earth!" Upa declared, becoming the focus of everyone's attention when the Kami left his God Temple after being absent.

"Don't tell me you're going to fight too, shrimp. You'll get yourself killed," Piccolo smirked with a mocking grin.

Before anyone could reply anything to the cocky reincarnation of the Demon King, the sky in the horizon dyed blood-red, disturbing the darkening melancholy of the evening. Everyone on the God Temple could feel the brewing of the next inevitable conflict.

"What's happening?" the sharp glare in Bardock's eyes and his confidence had evaporated in a blink when the Saiyan realized that he couldn't keep up with the Ki sensory of the local protectors of Earth.

"The Saiyans have begun their attack," Krillin stated it bluntly. "Again…"

"There's a whole lot of them!" Yamcha took a frightened step back with his skin becoming pale. "Like a whole army, or something…"

"Hmph, so the little puppy went barking to his master and asked for some help?" Bardock snickered to himself, enjoying the thought of young Vegeta relying on Frieza's soldiers to fight his battles for him but loathing it at the same time as a signifier of how low the Saiyan elite have stooped.

"No. It's not the Frieza Army, though their power levels are similar. I might not have gotten the chance to sense their Ki but… In their Ki, I recognize that feeling that I once had when fighting these things. It's Saibamen," Chayote declared.

"Saibamen? As strong as the Frieza Army?" Bardock looked at Chayote confused.

"Yeah, their strength depends on the soil they're grown from. Earth is vastly more fertile than Planet Vegeta," Chayote nodded. "The Saibamen grown here might be twice as powerful as those you might have encountered on other planets."

"Hmph, I don't care either way. My enemy is Vegeta!" Bardock roared out, letting all of his Ki rage at once. Even at the grand altitude of the God Temple, his evolved power sent shockwaves and rippled the temple floor just by him getting serious on the temple. Without having any clue where he was going, Bardock blasted off in the direction where everyone had been looking.

"Chayote… Who are these Saibamen, who's this Vegeta guy?" Krillin wondered.

"Saibamen are cultivated warriors. They grow from the soil they're planted in and can be used for sparring or as a cheap fighting force though their seeds are somewhat too rare to be used for military purposes. Trust me, you can't miss them. I'll be helping you fight," Chayote declared.

"Huh? You won't be attacking the Saiyans themselves?" Yamcha wondered.

"I don't want to fight Vegeta, plus, I've got some issues left to settle with those pea-brain bastards," Chayote turned away and tried to focus her mind on her hatred for Saibamen rather than the conflict of facing Saiyan royalty at this moment.

"Chicken…" Piccolo mocked Chayote. "Fine, I'll eliminate the other Saiyan for you while you keep their henchmen busy."

* * *

"Hmm… So, this rock is Earth?" Nappa looked around. With an excited grin, he raised two of his fingers up, reducing the North City to nothing but dirty rubble and leaving the pair of Saiyans floating over a massive, city-sized crater. "Heh, this planet is falling apart by us just flexing our muscles. It seems the gravity here is so pathetic that we can just fly freely without even realizing it. I don't understand why we didn't blow this rock up from sky-high."

"Shut up, Nappa," Vegeta silenced his lackey. "It's our job to eliminate the rebels for my father and Frieza. The Saiyan elite don't do sloppy guesswork. Look carefully into your scouter and tell me if nothing seems out of the ordinary."

"Huh? No way… Those power levels are puny!" Nappa laughed out. "Who knew that Bardock aligned himself with such weaklings, I've seen trainees with higher power levels!"

"Think for a second, you imbecile, why are these power levels so small?" Vegeta hissed.

"Umm… That one fool sounded really desperate on the scouter transmission. Maybe they got wiped out?" Nappa patted his bald head in a rhythmic melody while he contemplated what he was asked to put together.

"Of course they were wiped out!" Vegeta yelled out. "But look around, what were they wiped out by!? Where is it in our readings? There's something very odd going on here. Until Bardock himself utters his reason for coming here to me with his final breath and we see each one of his scumbag pals dead before our eyes, neither Frieza, my King father nor my Saiyan pride will accept this job as complete."

"I see… There are a lot of measly power levels around. If we're not blowing every city up one by one, we could plant some Saibamen," Nappa suggested, pulling out a vial filled with green, pea-sized seeds. "The dirt here seems soft and exceptionally fertile. Maybe Bardock meant to cultivate an army of Saibamen himself here?"

"Now you're beginning to use your head, Nappa," Vegeta cracked a grin. "Go ahead, it would get awfully boring blowing up every tiny city bit by bit. Lousy rebel shitstains, getting themselves so injured that I can't tell them apart from local rabble! What an embarrassment for the entire Saiyan race!"

"Heh… I guess with the utter weakling that his son turned out to be, no wonder Bardock would consider Saibamen to be a worthwhile threat to his enemies!" Nappa joined in on the spiteful mockery of the rebellious Saiyans as he planted the Saibamen seeds in the dirt that he had left from North City. Even the cold ground of the northern regions felt soft, compared to the alien worlds that the Saiyans had visited throughout their lives and the inhospitable conditions that bred all the fine warriors the bodies of which they paved their current strength in.

Handfuls upon handfuls of green, tiny humanoids rose to their feet sprouting from the ground. The biotechnological weaponry of the space military cackled and shrieked, clanged their large claws together, and stomped the ground in hunger for violence and murder.

"Go, kill…" Nappa stood tall behind the cultivars and raised his arms up into the air. "Seek strong opponents and slay them all! Force those in hiding out from their holes!"

The army of Saibamen leaped and dashed out of the massive crater, looking for the nearest lives they could destroy and spreading across the area like the plague. More and more burst forth from the ground until they comprised a small platoon. This was an exceptional amount of rather rare and worthwhile biological weaponry that the Saiyans were sacrificing for their venture though these Saibamen seemed a great deal stronger than those they've encountered elsewhere so it seemed to be worth the hassle at this time.

"Say, Vegeta, there ain't that many of them. It's gonna take them at least four days to decimate the whole planet all by themselves…" Nappa turned to his superior with a questioning glare.

"I'm not moving a finger until this planet produces a worthy challenger. I am in no rush…" Vegeta smirked with a cruel smile, looking forward to the light show that their Saibamen would soon raise.

"Yeah, I understand that, but maybe we should have given them a scouter or something to track the bigger power levels?" Nappa dragged his hand across his bald head, rubbing it as if it would help him coat it with hair.

"Saibamen are mindless drones. They can obey orders just fine but even a measly scouter would blow their minds. Our technology is as wasted on them as it would be on these pathetic locals, it seems," Vegeta looked around, recalling the cute level of technologic development that he saw Nappa reduce to rubble a few minutes earlier. "Though, I suppose, we could assist them a little bit by directing their rampage toward the highest power levels."

The pair of Saiyans rose even higher above the ruined ground and blasted off toward the nearest high power level reading.


	121. Invasion!

"Hey, wait up!" Chayote yelled out to Bardock. Normally she'd have just caught up to someone she tried to close up on but Bardock was far too fast for her to be able to do so. His injuries after the battle against Piccolo and Goku had made him too much trouble to handle now that he had somewhat recovered which could have made him a huge problem if he didn't have the warm feelings toward his son that are rather uncharacteristic for a Saiyan.

"Oh, you've finally mustered up the guts to come with. Good, I've no idea where I'm going…" Bardock acknowledged Chayote's presence by slowing down some.

"Are you sure you're good challenging prince Vegeta like this? You're not fully recovered after the battle yet." Chayote warned the brutish Saiyan.

"I don't care about that. That little shit is the son of the bastard king that sold our planet and our pride out. My only regret is that I won't be able to make king Vegeta grieve the loss of his son quite like I have because he doesn't care about his son anywhere near as much as I do about my own," Bardock spat to the side in disdain of the Saiyan royal family. "Not to mention the fact that the brat killed my other son just because he could…"

It occurred to Chayote that it wasn't the entire reason why prince Vegeta ended blowing up Raditz's pod, if what little snippets Raditz himself let slip were to be taken seriously. Plus, it wasn't like Raditz was a guy that was at all easy to grieve based on what Chayote could recall about him. He was more than ready to send his own brother to the Otherworld way back. It was just cruel irony that it would be Goku's father who sent him there despite having no will to do so.

"Although I've gotta say, I will appreciate the bit of assistance. The little prince works in a squad of two so if you could take care of his hired muscle while I spank his unfledged ass, that would be great," Bardock clenched his fists by his side, judging from his stiff movements he was still feeling sore. The fact that the Saiyan was this powerful just after waking up a brutal fight for his life and just trying to imagine how powerful he'd become when fully recovered made Chayote worried, especially seeing how intense this guy could get when he had his mind set.

"Fine, I'll take care of the second guy, I won't fight prince Vegeta though," Chayote looked to Bardock. "If you're rushing into your death like this, that will be on you."

"That's cold…" Bardock chuckled to himself. "Then again, I can't ask you for anything more than that. I'm sorry I doubted your fortitude, you've got a Saiyan's attitude through and through."

Bardock picked some speed up though this time Chayote could keep up. His previous rush made him burn through whatever was remaining of his Ki so she breathed easier seeing Bardock regain some cool to his glare and take his pace in arriving at the northern wastelands where the two Saiyans occasionally flared up their Ki signatures, suggesting that they were partaking in some of the devastation that their cultivated warriors were into.

* * *

A scattered yet meager group of Saibamen blasted at the civilians that fled for their lives and reduced the buildings of the nearby town to dust with Ki blasts. A handful more flew about, ripping and tearing the fleeing people to pieces with a much more hands-on approach to their violent riot while a pair of them continued to hurl balls of sizzling bio-goop from an opening in their heads that dissolved the townsmen they showered in mere seconds.

The plant-like, childish menaces enjoyed their rampage a great deal, as evidenced by the wicked smiles on their faces and them taking their sweet time to cackle, flex, or dance in mid-air before picking up their concert of violence where they had previously left it off.

Roaring in a fury that drew from the source of the suffering experienced by the poor, fleeing fellow humans, Tenshinhan dived into the fray. He was alone right now, there were far too many groups scattered too far across the entire globe for them to stick together. Upa and Mr. Popo had a pair of magical carpets though they wouldn't have carried all of them where they needed to go, plus, Upa had his own business to take care of and he was the weakest hand-to-hand combatant and the slowest flier without the carpet anyway.

Tenshinhan's thoughts were everywhere but the battle. The enemy was making fun of him and grimacing at him as they evaded his strikes. The group attempted to swarm him all together by raiding him with aerial slashes. While individually this group was meager, together they were quite troublesome to deal with. Tenshinhan felt like he could have crushed these cultivated warriors with a single blow if only he could get his hands on one. Though actually getting his game together with all that's been happening, worrying about his friends and the humanity as a whole as well as dealing with their unorthodox team tactics that, admittedly, these folks were rather good at, was a pain in of itself.

The Saibamen scattered in a spherical formation and all extended their hands aiming at Tenshinhan. Volleys of Ki blasts erupted from their hands, in an attempt to overwhelm the three-eyed martial artist with the sheer quantity of their attacks and wear down his vastly superior Ki to that of their own. While Saibamen preferred bullying around weaklings, they had ways of dealing with a stronger opponent as well, as long as they still overnumbered them vastly.

Once the smoke cleared out, a transparent Kiai bubble flickered around Tenshinhan, having protected the martial artist from the bothersome fireworks. Having found his opening for attack, the martial artist could only smirk in mockery of his opponents who preyed on the weak though now found themselves confronted by someone vastly stronger than them that aimed to protect the weak they've been slaughtering up until now. Someone who possessed all of their values yet valued something else entirely, a living challenge to the few rules that defined the way of life of a Saibaman.

"Is that the best you guys got?" Tenshinhan prepared for a sudden counter-attack. His body flickered. The next time the Saibamen registered the man who moved with the swiftness of a greased lightning bolt, it was when Tenshinhan's elbow had smacked into one of their own within their dense ranks and splattered it and all of its compositional remains into mush.

The three-eyed fighter then vanished and appeared in between a pair of very confused Saibamen, spinning with elbow swipes aimed at their bloated heads from each direction – front to one of them and back of it to another. Both Saibamen fell to the ground and blew up from the influx of swelling force that their bodies failed to contain, heads smashed to porridge until their entire bodies blew up making the testament to Tenshinhan's mercilessness to the merciless irrelevant in the grander scheme.

A stiff kick to the mid-section send yet another Saibamen flying off into the horizon and blowing up as his body had sustained far too much damage in that one kick. The rest of the Saibamen staggered in fear. While they sometimes challenged mightier prey and managed to take it down through wicked team tactics, this time they had bitten off more than they could chew and they acknowledged it by flying off, running for their lives just like the humans that they were slaughtering a few moments ago.

"Barrage Dodonpa!" Tenshinhan yelled out, extending his finger and sending an incinerating beam to spell out oblivion to each and every little horror to terrorize this town. It wouldn't be easy to clean out the Earth just like this, even weaklings like these Saibamen would end up piling up in the end but Tenshinhan was a man of responsibility, not excuses for that was the way of a martial artist.

* * *

"Eeek! Bulma-san! My drones are getting totaled!" Dr. Puri dragged her curly, auburn hair by the handfuls as she shrieked at the view of static-filled cameras on the assortment of the drone view screens.

A rumbling blast made the entire Capsule Corp building shake and bob as more and more chunks of pebble-sized rubble began to fall from the roof, suggesting an imminent demise of the building if the complete mayhem in the West City was to continue.

"Your drones? Capsule Corp paid for them all, you know…" Bulma crossed her arms with a pout that suggested that the prodigy scientist was exactly the lady petty enough to worry about these sorts of things in a situation as dire as this one. "Damn it, where is everyone? If this keeps up, we won't need drones to track all this action, we'll be able to see it with our own eyes…" the woman looked up at the cracking roof of the lab.

"We'll be lucky if we won't be a part of that action…" Dr. Puri grit her teeth, looking more irritated than frightened for her life. Almost like these cultivated bio-warriors didn't seem like as much of a threat to her life as it was to her inventions.

"W-Wait… Who's that? Goku, maybe?" Bulma leaned in to gander at a flickering image on one of the wrecked drones that were yet to detonate. Before she could press her forehead to the screen, the warrior smashed the green cultivar with a double ax-handle slam and swooped in to catch the fragile invention, posing before the camera with a thumb-up. "Oh, it's him…" Bulma growled.

"He's quite a dreamy fellow, do you know him?" Dr. Puri turned to Bulma.

"Yeah, we used to date before he started cheating on me with every girl in the city like the complete oaf that he is!" Bulma yelled at the drone as if the man holding its bits and pieces could still hear her, which he definitely could not and it was something Bulma knew very well, having had a hand in building a few of them and sharpening Dr. Puri's designs.

"Ah, I see… It is unfortunate that you'd have caught him cheating like that… I was married once though our bond to each other was as deep as our devotion to our work." Dr. Puri nodded, looking like she could genuinely relate to Bulma's ire to some extent, though, perhaps, through a different angle.

"Huh? You were married?" Bulma crossed her arms, once again choosing to focus on the absolute worst thing imaginable to focus on in the face of an imminent, city-threatening crisis. "You look like you're barely in your twenties…"

"Oh, yes, well… I suppose I'm one of those older than they look types…" Dr. Puri chuckled, caressing her own blushing cheeks as she shook her head in the enjoyment of the compliment. "Sadly, I cannot imagine what it's like to have a man that abandons the bond of love for another though I do know what's it is like to lose them."

"Well…" Bulma's nose turned up as her lips stiffened in a pout. "I mean… He wasn't technically the one chasing all those chicks. It was more like they tied around his lap and arms when they noticed him as a prominent finalist of the World's Martial Arts Tournament but… He may as well have cheated on me!"

Yamcha continued to strike his way through the large group of Saibamen, punching and kicking them aside though these buggers looked tough enough to be able to take more than a few of his strikes before they called it quits. More exactly, they didn't even have what it took to call it quits, it was more like their bodies blew up forcing them to admit defeat via the way of self-destruction.

"Okay, guys, look good before the camera, let's try and get Bulma really impressed and swoony over me so that she won't be mad at me anymore, okay?" Yamcha joked in front of the raging band of Saibamen. The utter arrogance of their opponent drove the cultivated warriors into a frenzy as they rushed in to pile up on the poor oaf.

Yamcha leaned aside and continued to evade more than a few attempts to stranglehold him though once his carelessness allowed one of the nasty, little buggers to wrap their arms and legs around his arm, the rest were rushing in like sharks to the bloody water. Before long there were too many Saibamen for Yamcha to move, only a tiny gap between the living ball of holding through which Yamcha could see.

Even that final grace soon sunk into a flash of bright light, before a resonating blast covered the entire sky over the West City decimating the windows all across the major capital of the world and driving it into the nastiest case of a blackout that they've known since the riots of the "Devil" kanji appearing in the Central City. In a desperate attempt to kill the strong and goofy warrior that opposed them, the one-track-minded Saibamen chose to destruct their own bodies and sacrifice the entire squad for the death of one man.

"Awww man…" Yamcha stroke the back of his head, observing the resonating destruction that lingered after the cataclysmic blast of the combined self-destruction wave of the Saibamen attempting to drag him down under alongside them. "Bulma's not gonna like this at all. I better… Yeah… Maybe the others still need my help…"

With some minor scrapes and burns and one more tattered martial arts gi, Yamcha scurried on his way to get himself as far away from the West City as possible, after a simple visual inspection suggested that the Capsule Corp building was still intact and in decent enough condition.

* * *

Krillin grunted, surrounding himself in a bubble of Kiai that shielded him from a blob of acidic goop from an opening inside of a Saibaman's head. He didn't think that he'd be struggling quite this hard with these cultivars, he could sense that whenever Tenshinhan or Chiaotzu got to these small clusters of Ki signatures, the battles tended to wrap up neatly. And thus, Krillin lobbed a Ki blast into the opening of the Saibaman's head while it was still closing from throwing acid at him, causing a gruesome, head-splitting blast from within taking the cultivar out.

"It hurts to admit it, but I might need some more training. I better take this battle seriously or else I'm gonna lag behind…" Krillin sighed. He cupped his arms beside him and activated his Hot-Red Mode to supercharge his attack "Ka-Me-Ha-Me…" he chanted.

A rumbling, orange blast covered up and swallowed the lot of Saibamen together, freeing the recovering construction of the Papaya Island that still fostered the hopes of hosting the next World Martial Arts Tournament soon enough once the reconstruction of the island is finished from the invading threat of these plant-like interlopers.

Krillin drove his wristband over his sweaty forehead. He did not expect that taking on a handful of these mooks would work up a sweat up for him, though it did. He had lost touch with the rest of the guys though in these times of peace he had fallen behind not just Piccolo and Tenshinhan but Yamcha too. Krillin hated to admit it but the dolt had taken the frustration of his break-up and channel it into training whereas Krillin just engaged in light workouts that kept his shape up.

Things might have needed to change. This was too close for comfort. The bald-headed warrior lamented the experience of facing someone like Bardock or those other two Saiyans that crashed onto Earth in his current state. He'd need to work extra hard compared to the rest to catch up now that he was reminded of how quickly the peaceful life that he had been taking for granted for seven years straight could all go to hell.

"You won't come near this sacred temple!" Chiaotzu exclaimed, extending his palms downward as an azure glow of erupting Ki surrounded his body and transferred in an instant in the shape of a telekinetic hold over his opponent. The Saibamen shrieked out in discomfort as they froze in mid-air, having ascended all the way up to the God Temple already.

The ghoulish martial artist clutched his tiny fists, forcing his telekinetic grip to crush the cultivars into mush that was too disembodied and messy for their bodies to maintain their integrity. The cultivated warriors blew up all at once in a resonating cascade of blasts.

"Thank you for staying behind and protecting this temple," Mr. Popo nodded with a smile on his face, looking not at all frightened by the invasion of these cultivated alien warriors. His eyes remained as apathetic as always even if his upturned lips suggested a gleeful expression.

"I've intended on patrolling the Sacred Land of Korin but I saw Yajirobe slicing up these aliens down below. That was when I sensed a handful of them rushing up here though I have no doubt that you'd have handled them, Mr. Popo…" Chiaotzu chuckled to himself, looking a bit embarrassed by the expression of gratitude as it wasn't even a full decade ago that he had intended on following Tenshinhan in the path of assassination.

"No, you have become so amazing!" Mr. Popo shook his head calmly while admiring the efforts of the Dragon Team. "Honestly, I'm not sure if even the old Kami would have managed to keep the situation on Earth under control in these crazy times but with your aid, we just might do it!"

Chiaotzu nodded, looking ecstatic with hope.

* * *

"Goddang it!" Yajirobe croaked as he dived past yet another cultivated warrior rushing past him, leaving the sliced-up cultivar to fall down in pieces after he had cut him down and re-sheathed his sword once more before the Saibamen could even register it. "Where is errybody!? I'm gonna get killed in 'ere!" he huffed before regaining his composure and entering his sword drawing stance in preparation for the next batch of assailants.

"If only I could drop dis 'ere payload off my back…" he huffed while looking down on a sash filled with heavy orbs hanging on his waist. "But dose are what I went out ta get in da first place!" Yajirobe complained as he slashed into ribbons a pair of Saibamen that looked to do the same to him.


	122. The Brawny Man Loses It

"Heh…" Nappa snooted over a collection of flat, stony islands with patches of moss littering them before swiping his hand. A cascade of rising pillars of unfurling Ki decimated the landscape, sinking the islands down under. The brute's scouter registered the disappearance of a power level in his sight and began showing a single-digit amounting to zero. "That's what you get, honestly…" he mumbled to himself, looking mighty proud of his act of destruction.

"Hmph. Which one was that?" Vegeta wondered with a hint of irritation in his tone.

"Who knows?" Nappa shrugged. "He was big and looked pretty tough but I guess in the end he was too broken to put up any resistance…"

"Those Saibamen better have found and eliminated the rest of Bardock's squad of cripples, this is getting boring. I don't want to resort to blowing up this planet before I make sure to execute Bardock by my own hand for betraying my father…" Vegeta seemed conflicted between his need for instant gratification in seeing Earth scattered across its system in the shape of glittery space dust and the more rewarding feeling of breaking the traitorous rebel in half and seeing to it that Bardock gets what the prince thought he deserved.

"Hmm… I'm kind of wondering what could've done it to these guys. They're all a bunch of trash but their power levels should have instantly stood out amongst the Earthlings," Nappa slapped the top of his bald head a couple of times, sharpening his focus in his vain attempt to think this situation through.

"Vegeta!" a loud roar pierced the darkening evening skies before a thud resonated from a nearby rocky isle in this eastern archipelago once Bardock's feet touched the ground.

"If it isn't the traitorous scum. You're lucky Frieza didn't come to get you himself," Vegeta sneered at the low-class warrior before focusing his glare on another figure landing nearby the battered Bardock. "Who are you? I don't remember ever seeing you amongst Bardock's goons,"

"I'm Chayote, prince Vegeta, a Saiyan living on Earth," Chayote bowed her head in a show of politeness and respect to the Saiyan royalty.

"Oh? That's a surprise, I didn't expect to see another Saiyan on Earth. I thought this sector to be a blank space on our maps… We're still years away from properly colonizing it. I didn't think Saiyans even served as scouts," Vegeta turned on his scouter to measure Chayote's power level. The tiny do-hickey continued to beep and boop before the plastic screen cracked and the scouter fell off of the prince's face spitting sparks.

"Wh-What's that!?" Nappa yelled out in shock. "Vegeta did your scouter malfunction!?"

"No, I don't think it did. I think that this older model is incapable of calculating this level of battle power," Vegeta looked at the shattered and still crackling bits and pieces of his gadget on the ground. The two Saiyans lowered themselves and landed on the same island where Bardock and Chayote had positioned themselves on.

"B-But…" Nappa shook his head in disbelief. "That shouldn't be possible! There can't be anyone this strong that we're not aware of, definitely not in this rundown sector!"

"Indeed, this appears to be a surprise," Vegeta replied with a cold face. He wasn't sure what to make out of this revelation. One thing that was apparent though, he felt satisfied with his decision to not prematurely blow this planet up. "Speak now, wench, how did you end up on this desolate planet and how come you are this strong?"

"There's no time for that, Vegeta!" Bardock swiped his hand aside, dismissing the prince's request. "I'm here to make you pay for betraying everything that our race stands for! And after I'm done spanking your impubescent ass, you better believe I'm gunning for your cowardly father!"

Vegeta's hand rose without warning. A bright flash shot out from his hand in the shape of a shapeless Ki blast that hit Bardock square in the chest and took him flying back a great deal. Once it began seeming like the blast would run out of strength, it curved upward and detonated up in the air, resulting in Bardock falling from the sky smoking with his armor shattering off of his right shoulder as the warrior had temporarily lost his consciousness.

"Heh, nice work shutting that fool up, Vegeta!" Nappa cheered on the Saiyan prince.

"Not quite," Vegeta bit his lower lip in fury. "I intended to kill him, though I'm glad I didn't now. His constant barking got on my nerves. After all the effort to lure him out, it would have been such a shame to blow him up so soon."

"Prince Vegeta, if I may, I'd like to ask you to leave this planet," Chayote spoke up. She saw what happened when people spoke out of line in the presence of the capricious Saiyan elite and it aligned with what she had heard of the prince growing up but it didn't feel like she spoke out of line given how Vegeta asked him to talk earlier.

"Oh? And why's that?" Vegeta asked back with a mocking tone. He was fully prepared to burst into laughter though he decided to milk this joke further just to see if an even more comedic nugget didn't come out as a result of it.

"Because I've come to call this planet my home. It's where I'm training to become stronger and it's where all of my training partners are located. I'd prefer to keep this planet around," Chayote shrugged. "I recognize that you have issues with Bardock, frankly, I'm not too fond of him myself. He invaded this planet looking to plunder it, he killed a fellow Saiyan who pushed me to grow stronger and stronger by doing the same. I don't care if you break his bones and take him with you, as long as the two of you are off my planet."

Loud and bratty cackling halted Chayote's attempts to reason with the Saiyan prince. Soon enough, Nappa's own crowing joined in on the fray before the muscle-bound giant cracked his knuckles and took a pair of bold steps forward as if attempting to impose on Chayote though the female Saiyan continued to stare up at the approaching giant, utterly unimposed.

"Heh, a squeaky little shrimp-like that has no right to ask anything of the Saiyan elite in such a tone. You're just low-class trash meant to clean up other low-class trash so that your betters can enjoy their fighting without having to deal with that chaff, got it!?" Nappa extended his fist out and bumped it onto Chayote's head, nudging it a few times in a misguided attempt to make it hurt. "We'll leave if we feel like it, we'll kill and destroy whatever we want for as long as we want, and then, maybe we'll blow the planet up and maybe we won't, depending on how much in for a light show we are at that time. It won't matter to us if you're there or not."

"Nappa!" Vegeta's voice pierced Nappa's scalp like a blade, forcing the giant bully to stagger back and turn back at his superior as if he was showered in boiling water. "I wouldn't quite aggravate this woman in your shoes. That being said, what Nappa said wasn't wrong. Chayote, was it?"

"Yes, my prince," Chayote nodded her head. It appeared that her desperate struggle to refrain from breaking Nappa's arm before shoving it through his own chest had yielded some results. She was by far the closest to a furious breakdown she's been lately and she wasn't sure just how much further she could push this.

"You're incredibly powerful for a low-class Saiyan. So powerful, in fact, that we'd let you join our group. Think about it, it's the dream of every Saiyan to work on a unit managed by Frieza himself. Working alongside Vegeta, the prince of Saiyans, is the highest that a low-class warrior can aspire to, it's an honor beyond your upbringing so you should feel honored just by me bringing it up…" Vegeta posed higher and mightier than his short stature would have suggested him being. Though the man's size didn't confuse Chayote for a second. The Saiyan prince was lousy at restraining his own wild power so Chayote had a full sniff of it before the first punch was even thrown.

"Oh!? Really, Vegeta!? This woman's strength is that impressive!?" Nappa dropped his lower jaw before turning back to Chayote and clapping at her. "Amazing, what do you think? The only low-class filth to ever be graced by Prince Vegeta this way was that Bardock's punk-ass brat Raditz though it wasn't Vegeta's call. It is very rare for Vegeta to acknowledge the strength of another Saiyan, the prince is right, you should feel honored."

"Raditz?" Bardock's voice echoed through the island, despite being muttered at a restrained tone, the innermost, absolute surge of murderous will boiling within it made it resonate and seep through every crack in the rocky island where the Saiyans met. "Don't you dare speak about Raditz, you punk!"

Crystal-clear Ki burst forth from the fractures, shaking the foundation of the entire island and causing the ocean washing away at the coastline of the main continent from the east to bash, whirl, and break with all of its natural fury. Bardock's roar seeped into his outburst of Ki, obtaining an almost supernatural pitch to it as the booming of his Ki became one with his yell. The injured Saiyan burst forth from beneath the island, splitting it into thirty-two separate rocks that began sinking from the wash of the raging ocean.

Chayote wanted to alert Bardock to settle it with Vegeta by himself. She didn't care which one would come out on top, all that she cared that both of them scrammed from Earth and that she could finally start her peaceful life here on Earth. She'd sought for a way to restrain her worse impulses though planet Babari had taught her that there was nothing wrong with them and that she's better off accepting that part of her and dealing with it. She was free to find her paradise here as soon as the Saiyans are gone.

Though Bardock was in no shape to listen to it. He dashed at Vegeta with his power level booming to no ends, infuriated by the bringing up of the demise of his own son. Just barely Vegeta managed to weather the fury of the elements and then block Bardock's strike though the berserker exploded with a flurry of brutal and unorthodox strikes that threw even the Saiyan prince off-guard and, with a vicious knee strike, sent Vegeta flying off over the splintered archipelago of mossy rocks where Bardock pursued him with a crazed roar.

"Heh, hold on, Vegeta," Nappa prepared to take off and join his leader in battle. Chayote's image flickered in front of his face as she blocked his dash with her sudden movement in front of him. "Wh-What's the meaning of this? Don't tell me you're going to side with that rebel dirtbag?"

"I'm not siding with anybody. If prince Vegeta ends up blowing that loose canon up, that's fine by me. Though I'm going to leave it up to their fists to decide. One thing I'm not going to do is guarantee the victory of prince Vegeta by letting you join in on his battle." Chayote explained her actions.

"You damn wench!" Nappa grit his teeth and clenched his fists, tensing up all of his muscles at once as he bubbled in ire in front of her. "You let Vegeta's praise of your childish accomplishments get way over your head!"

Nappa flung a downward hammer strike only to be met by Chayote's cross-armed block before the Saiyan locked her hands up over the giant's wrist and, with a swift drag down, flattened his face onto the stone floor. Knowing full-well that a brute such as Nappa wouldn't take his literal takedown by staying down, she swung him around her axis and flung him further to put some distance between them.

"Where'd you learn that trick?" Nappa dragged his knuckle across his face to wipe the moss and dirt off of it as his skin began swelling up red in the embarrassment and boiling intensity that he felt about being humiliated that way.

"If you managed to stay put and listen over gloating about how amazing and elite you are, maybe you'd learn about what this planet calls "martial arts". It is an art of combat, a teaching to make you fight efficiently, rather than flinging your own strength at the enemy and hoping for the best," Chayote replied.

"You sound stuck-up, that's okay, it's nothing a one-way trip to the Other World can't fix!" Nappa took a fighting stance. "Don't think for a second that prince Vegeta's gonna swoop in and save you either. He's got no use for trash that are weaker than me!"

"It's you who should be worried. I still have reservations about raising my hand against the prince. You, on the other hand, I couldn't give fewer shits about," Chayote entered her own fighting stance.

Nappa took off in a reckless charge, just when Chayote thought he'd just try to bash her aside with a shoulder-charge, the Saiyan brute shot his hand out down and used it to repurpose his momentum into a sweeping swing of his entire lower body, prompting the wary Saiyan to vault over his swing. Nappa jumped up, attempting to curb her evasive attempts with a rough stomp though Chayote's tail wrapped around the Saiyan's foot and swung her around the obstacle, resulting in her landing on all fours behind him.

A flare of Nappa's Ki alerted Chayote to his assault, without wasting the time to look at her opponent, the female Saiyan vaulted aside, avoiding a punch enhanced by gleaming, bright Ki that crushed the entire island and sunk it into a wild pillar of erupting Ki. Like a skater, Chayote skid across the water's surface, tracking Nappa's Ki signature inside the smoke. A chunky, bright Ki blast homed in on Chayote from within the smoking devastation, forcing her to vault back and kick it up into the sky without much effort. She could feel Nappa's supersonic blitz. His Ki had increased since the last time he went at her, it was erupting and crackling around him in the shape of electricity.

The rough-housing Saiyan dived through a mere afterimage, bashing into it as if he had attempted to break Chayote's spine with his tackle. Fixing his eyes on the evasive Saiyan, Nappa charged right at her with an uppercut that Chayote leaned away from. It wasn't tough identifying a smug grin on the bald Saiyan's face as his elbow shot down in recovery from his uppercut. Chayote felt pressed to a corner and blocked the strike. Nappa's palm hit her square in the chest and shoved her away with some decent pushback put into it.

"You'd better move it!" Nappa taunted the female Saiyan as he raised his right hand with his index and middle fingers up and swiped his right arm to the side, unleashing a massive exploding wave in his way and covering the entire area in front of him in a blinding gleam of pink. "Serves you right for underestimating me!"

"I think I have a fair understanding of your strength at this point," Chayote spoke from above the blast zone, having avoided Nappa's exploding wave technique by quickly ascending upward. "To fight you at my full strength would be a waste of my stamina."

"What's that!?" Nappa clenched his fist while gritting his teeth and trying to intimidate the opposing Saiyan by just flexing his muscles again.

"In the study of these martial arts, I and Kakarot, alongside the Earthlings, have uncovered some interesting techniques. They're methods of Ki control. One of them allows you to drive your body to its limits, draining it of fluids to a dangerous degree, it is called the Hot-Red Mode…" Chayote explained.

"Trying to talk me into submission? Useless!" Nappa mocked her in return.

"However, there is another method of Ki control. One focusing on calmness and confidence. Unlike the Hot-Red Mode, the Cool-White Mode requires the confidence of victory stemming from the wisdom and a feeling of the serene mind. It actually ends up reducing the Ki output, making you seem weaker as a result, however, it has a handy effect of perfectly preserving all of your stamina, allowing you to fight without tiring yourself out," Chayote finished her explanation.

"You're saying that you intend on handicapping yourself against me to preserve strength?" Nappa grinned, revealing that he was more than just blind wrath and flying fists and actually had the ability to listen. Though Chayote wasn't sure why she doubted that fact, knowing how well Nappa had obeyed the commands of his prince up until now.

"I'd wish that was the case…" Chayote smirked.

"You got that right, afraid that if you lower your guard for even one second, I'll break you and obliterate your crippled remains? You've got that right!" Nappa posed by patting his rock-hard biceps, looking mighty proud of his bulk and hardiness.

"That's not what I meant, blockhead," a vein twitched in Chayote's forehead, ruining any chances for her to entering the serene state of mind necessary for Cool-White. "This martial arts thing is kinda tough. It even takes Earthlings their entire lifetime to learn it right, mastering it is a whole another thing entirely. I have to admit that I still don't have the right frame of mind to go Cool-White just yet. So I was thinking that you could be my training partner and I can polish my skills as I beat you down."

"W-Why you…!" Nappa tensed up his entire body, spreading his bulging thighs to the side as his armor bloated out from the pressure of his bulking muscles inside. His Ki boomed out unrestrained as lightning crackled about in vicinity and electrical surges ran up and down the body of the Saiyan brute. "I'm gonna take my time making you suffer and beg me to forget you ever said those words!"

The storm of power jolting out from Nappa convinced Chayote that this lug would keep her entertained until she could sort things out on what to do with prince Vegeta once Bardock wraps up his business with him. Her mind just wasn't in the fight, it was teeming with tiny questions and doubts: would she allow Bardock to kill Vegeta if he managed to win, would she actually oppose her prince and strike him if need be, if she did settle on joining him, would she really leave Earth just to serve Frieza after spending so much time thinking that door being slammed shut in front of her face?


	123. A Hot, Unbounded Battle!

Outbursts of lightning lashed out in all directions once Nappa charged out at Chayote, telegraphing his next attack as clearly as his blind fury allowed him by carrying his right-hand bent and in position for a knife-edge chop. With a simple thrust of her palm, Chayote restrained Nappa's chopping arm with her own right while her left punished the brute's face with a barrage of straights that reloaded and re-entered the fray just as the last one had concluded.

Taken aback by the violent response, Nappa staggered back, his hands twitching over his busted face. The Saiyan looked worried to touch his face and deal with the rapid bleeding as it might have seemed to him that any pressure on his skull would have caved it in. He did not notice Chayote moving in from up above him with an overhead kick that sent Nappa crashing down into the uneasy waves below.

The waters howled and erupted in a bubbling burst when Nappa rushed out, oblivious to the blood running down his eyes though the red he saw in them was not due to the bleeding of his busted face, it was in how much he wanted his opponent ripped apart by his own hands. Chayote blinked out and vanished up to Nappa's face, throwing a vicious hook into the Saiyan's chest, having decided to break his body as well as his face.

Nappa roared out in pain as the force of the punch alone was sufficient enough to send him crashing back own but he didn't just need to feel the fact that Chayote had left him with something extra, he could see the violet Ki blast trying to make its way through his chest and pushing him down underwater where it detonated in a pillar-shaped explosion, sending enough water into the atmosphere for it to shower the entire archipelago for a few minutes.

"You can definitely take a hit, I'll give you that," Chayote pouted her lips, feeling irritated by the fact that Nappa slowly ascended from what was supposed to be his watery grave, wiping the blood off of his face in an awkward slouch and a wheeze to his breath. His Saiyan armor got blown clean off and no longer protected his body which meant that he couldn't take any successive rough hits like that.

"This… This shouldn't be possible. We've spent years conquering planets and fighting to our fullest! There is no way in hell that we should be outpaced by some Earthling lovers!" Nappa yelled out, releasing all of his pent up aggression which he was unable to release as Chayote outpaced him every step of the way into a single resonating blast of his aura. "Bardock and his goons, you and Kakarot, you're all just pests to Saiyan elite like us and I'm the pest control!"

"Just can't get the clue, can you?" Chayote sighed in disappointment. Frankly, she was a bit disappointed in herself too. She's been fighting this Saiyan seriously this whole time even though she was confident that she'd have been able to best him with just half of her power, even though then it'd have been an actual battle.

"I'll kill all of you myself!" Nappa bellowed and threw his index and middle fingers up.

Chayote felt a surge of Ki down below, she wasn't sure what that was all about but it made her wary as the surge soon surpassed Nappa's own Ki signature. A mighty explosive wave rose from underwater and washed away at Chayote in an instant. The wave emanated with heat and forceful pressure and resisting its force felt like hell itself. Its drafting effects lasted for a while though once Chayote pushed back against its bright and powerful pressure only the resulting smoke was left to deal with.

The entire archipelago was thusly reduced to pebbles. Nappa's technique took a large chunk out of the faraway mountainous shoreline too. Chayote dived right out of the smoke though Nappa must have been expecting it. He thrust his arm forward, releasing a violet blaze of Ki that appeared to be infused with the air itself and expanding in a wave of immense pressure as it thrust Chayote back. It was only a temporary mean as the female Saiyan recovered and resumed her dash immediately after.

The head of the charging Saiyan smashed against Nappa's throwing the exhausted giant back. Chayote grabbed around as much of Nappa's roided out neck as she could, digging her fingers and nails into it to maintain a better grip and smacking him with the front and back of her hand a few times before wrapping her tail around his neck and throwing him down into the whirlpools of his own making.

"Heh…" Nappa chuckled to himself in a restrained and croaking voice. It was very much unlike him to speak in such a reserved tone though his body was thrashed by now and he had fired most of that brutish spunk that he had at Chayote already. "You don't hit as hard as you used to. Getting tired?"

"That's rich coming from you," Chayote gave the rising Saiyan who appeared to be having trouble just elevating him to Chayote's level a strict look. She was irritated by the Saiyan's resistance to being done in and she was doing her best to restrain from using too much power as she'd still have to deal with either Bardock or Vegeta soon enough.

"It shows. You see, us elite Saiyan warriors are used to eradicating entire civilizations and conquering worthy planets or destroying the useless ones. Meek trash such as yourself probably just whips out her strength once in a while to fight some strong guy and then goes back to being lazy. If you're getting winded already, this next one's gonna blow you away. This here's my ultimate technique!" Nappa proclaimed before taking a wide-guard fighting stance and charging at Chayote.

The Saiyan woman blocked the thrust kick and the subsequent barrage of kicks though the finishing touch of his rush attack sent Chayote sliding back through the air even though her block. Chayote was about to taunt Nappa about little to no effect being left on her from his entire rush attack though it appeared that Nappa's true ultimate technique was yet to come. The brutish Saiyan flexed his entire body, spreading his arms and legs out as he tucked his neck and dropped his jaw in preparation for the fruit to all that swelling up Ki inside him.

Just as a bright gleam appeared in Nappa's mouth, Chayote got herself together and snapped right up to the giant's face. Absolute horror perplexed Nappa's wide eyes once he saw his opponent right up his face with milliseconds left to when his blast would be ready. Utilizing that ample amount of time, Chayote shot her knee up at Nappa's chin and shut his mouth before his mouth blast could leave it, resulting in an internal detonation that appeared to implode Nappa's body from within and drop him with whited out eyes and deflated body mass down to float onto the uneasy ocean.

Feeling Nappa clinging to life by a completely irrelevant sliver, Chayote turned back to the direction where Vegeta and Bardock had been clashing. The two had moved significantly from fighting just behind the two. Chayote could sense their battle had taken them further to the south-east, toward the many tropical islands that covered the area. The female Saiyan clenched her fist, wondering if she had truly figured out which side she'd be willing to support if she had to choose. Realizing that it was best to decide that matter once she saw which side held the advantage and which side would end up winning, the Saiyan took off toward their battlefield.

* * *

A handful of Saibamen charged at a lone young man amongst them. Upa's eyes snapped open before the rushing pests could deliver the finishing blow and pulled out his tomahawks, spinning them around in his hands while turning around his own axis, resulting in a mighty, turbulent gale picking the little green men up and throwing them all up into the sky.

"It is true that in terms of combat I am weaker than you, though this is my planet and its forces bend to my will. Begone, those that threaten it!" Upa let out his battle cry as he clanged the tops of his tomahawks together and made the skies turn black in an instant, having mystical lightning storms ripping the Saibamen apart where they floated weightless and helpless in the face of the vortex of wind.

"Hmph… You might be a fragile little twig, Kami, but it seems like you have things under control here," Piccolo made sure to find an opportunity to mock the Earth's guardian at the same time as he commended him. The Namekian held a beaten to a pulp Saibaman in his own hand which he promptly flung up and decimated with a mouth blast.

"I do not need you to watch my back, Piccolo," Upa gave the reincarnation of the Demon King a scolding glare. A glare which Piccolo must have found amusing as the Namekian just snickered to himself with a shrug.

"If that's what you think I was doing here, you're hopelessly misguided. Anyway, I'm headed to fight the actual Saiyan threat. These are your people to protect, do your job. Whether they live or die, it doesn't bother me either way," Piccolo turned toward the rampaging Ki to the south of Mt. Paozu and in the archipelago to the south-east to that location as well.

"I wonder about that… You did come here first, after all," Upa smiled, even though Piccolo gave the Kami a furious glint from his eyes, Upa did not mean it as an offense at all.

"You've done it now. Don't you dare get yourself killed, your life is mine to take," Piccolo grumbled while looking away the whole time before taking off.

* * *

"Vegeta!" Bardock roared out, charging at the Saiyan prince. His bloodthirsty rush attack was interrupted by Vegeta's explosive wave as the Saiyan prince threw his limbs outward and let out a furious roar, glistening the surroundings with a blue light and throwing Bardock back to skid across the ocean surrounding the tropical island they've settled to battle on to.

"Is this your visualized dream of having the balls to confront my father? Interesting, allow me to show you the power that you will never achieve!" Vegeta smirked at Bardock while the injured Saiyan brawler rushed back to his battlefield.

Just as Bardock rushed in to sock his opponent in the face, Vegeta smacked his opponent senseless with the back of his hand, throwing Bardock out of the loop for a bit. The Saiyan prince then turned around for another smack, this time powerful enough to send his opponent flying and not just disorient him. Vegeta was quick to race after his airborne opponent with a barrage of fists to weaken him further. A couple of knee strikes to the mid-section turned Bardock's resistance off once the brawler began fostering hopes of raising his hands up to protect himself again. Then a stiff rising kick to the mid-section sent Bardock over the clouds.

Vegeta snapped before his airborne opponent who still appeared to be reeling from his earlier beatdown, another vicious flurry of fists and knee strikes later, Vegeta finally decided to put his opponent down with a double ax-handle slam to send Bardock crashing into a crater of his own making down on the little island they've been duking it out on. The Saiyan prince was in no rush to finish off his opponent, instead, he chose to lower himself from the clouds in a slow and controlled descent, gloating over his enemy without even needing to utter a word.

"What's the matter?" Vegeta opened himself up as a taunt. "Don't tell me I've beaten that fighting spirit out of you already?"

"Eat shit and die, welp!" Bardock roared out, jumping back onto his feet and unleashing a barrage of Ki blasts at Vegeta from a close-range. With a vanishing attack, the brawling Saiyan closed the measly distance between himself and Vegeta up, throwing a pair of body shots before delivering a rising uppercut and stunning his opponent momentarily. Instead of wasting his landing, Bardock slammed his hands in a double-ax handle slam and delivered a spinning kick to Vegeta's mid-section that sent the Saiyan royalty skidding back on the sand.

With a calm and composed face, Bardock glared at Vegeta as the prince lowered his block and returned to his fighting stance. Bardock's fist clenched in fury as he recalled the struggles that he and his squad went through in order to get to this point and while he never, even in his worst nightmares, imagined having to face not the king but his prince as well as being injured after a tough battle with the rest of his squad being on death's door, his iron resolve powered him through the rampant difference between the two of the men and allowed him to hold his own for the moment.

"I will admit, I'd have rather recovered from this battle before liberating the Saiyan race. Though the locals don't trust me enough to heal me as they've healed themselves and that's on me. I'd also rather be bashing your old man's face in, you might be a smug piece of shit but you're not the one that ran the Saiyan race into the ground by groveling before Frieza. Then again, even if do win, the victory would feel shallow with my squad battered and broken…" Bardock replied.

Vegeta vanished from his location, snapping right up to Bardock with his foot shooting into Bardock's gut, driving all air from the brawler's body and fazing out his eyes for a moment. Vegeta jumped with an uppercut, sending the stunned Saiyan flying before vanishing again and appearing over the soaring Saiyan to stomp him back down to the ground with a straight stomping dive. Once Bardock was properly crushed beneath his feet, Vegeta delivered a stiff though more demeaning kick to the face of the fallen Saiyan, sending him skidding across the island to the edge of its shores.

"Battered? Broken?" Vegeta laughed out, looking proud of the work he's done on Earth. "You imbecile, they're all dead already. The Saibamen got to few of them while I and Nappa got to dispose of a pair of them. I ended up disposing of the woman by accident, there was an annoying building in the desert that I wanted to blow up. Her power level was so insignificant in that state that I barely even noticed it was gone. Nappa disposed of that big and brainless guy, seemed fair that the executioner would fit the victim."

"You bastard!" Bardock roared. His eyes went white while his entire body appeared to swell up past and beyond the point it should have been able to reach in his current beaten state. The sudden outburst of azure aura from the Saiyan berserker even caught the prince himself off-guard as while he couldn't feel Ki signatures and his scouter was destroyed – basic survival instincts translated to him the fact that something was very much off with this outburst.

Despite this moment of confusion, Vegeta got the grip of himself before Bardock could begin pressing his newly surging power on him and charged to match the rushing Saiyan head-on. The two clashed one with the other in a contest of strength though where Bardock appeared to have gone completely berserk, his opponent was just toying with him and looked mostly amused by the amount of force that this low-ranking footman of the Saiyan military managed to pull out from him.

A knee to Bardock's stomach appeared to crush all of the renewed vitality and fighting instinct within the Saiyan warrior and send Bardock to his knees. Whereas the spirit of the Saiyan warrior still raged fiercely inside him, his body was simply past the point where he could accomplish the things that his furious mind set out to do. Without much resistance from the collapsing Saiyan's part, Vegeta flung Bardock up in the air as his own body lit up with an azure gleam of his own.

"It really does bring me joy to see a nobody like you being blown into oblivion and forgotten. Nobody to remember you, your family, and squad decimated by my own hand. Oh well, at least you'll get to see your goons and your sons really soon. I'll make sure to send your timid wife your way soon enough as well," Vegeta mocked the powerless Saiyan before he raised his arms up to deliver the final blow. A stream of blinding, blue flash streaked up from Vegeta's own intense aura, beaming up to Bardock with the goal of reducing him to dust.

Bardock's fighting spirit seemed to reignite in mid-air, prompted by the words that Vegeta intended to be the last coherent thing he'd hear before being obliterated. The taunt that made him realize what was at stake, the revenge that he'd squander if he allowed it all to end here. It didn't matter how close his body was to dying, how much power he'd left or how hopeless this fight seemed.

"Gine? Don't you dare talk about Gine!" Bardock flexed his entire body back to life and reignited his crystal-clear aura before throwing his hand out to deliver one, final, full-powered Ki wave to resist the prince's attempts to decimate him. Bardock's large energy wave appeared to struggle against Vegeta's push initially, though Bardock did not intend to die out without a struggle. The roaring Saiyan sent a rapid barrage of Ki bursts to further energize his blast which allowed him to stalemate Vegeta's beam for a while.

While Vegeta appeared perplexed at first, looking almost worried enough to make an inner resolution that he'd never again taunt this low-ranking trash just so he could avoid further miraculous revitalizations and power surges such as these, once he sensed Bardock's momentary power-up running out and saw the gleam of Bardock's aura fading away, he realized that he was worrying for naught. His push finally prevailed over the rebellious Saiyan though he wouldn't need to wait the time necessary for the clash to resolve as Bardock had simply run out of strength and began collapsing into the center of the clash himself.

When his energy burst, at last, prevailed over the vengeful Saiyan soul, Vegeta looked up to see if any trace remained of Bardock though he was surprised to not even see one speck of dust landing on the soil around him. He had blown entire civilizations up into oblivion and never had he seen a kill so empty and clean. The absolute pointlessness of Bardock's struggle appeared to leave the Saiyan somewhat confused with himself at first though then his eyes noticed something unusual up in the sky.

Bardock's limp and debilitated body hung over the shoulder of a petite feminine figure as her tail flapped about though whether it was because of the excitement or because of irritation it was too early to tell. Chayote's head turned so that one of her eyes could look at the prince before she landed and put Bardock's body beside her. She doubted if the prince would give her the leeway to bring the beaten Saiyan anywhere else.

The moment she looked forward to the least came to be, at last, she'd have to choose between the Earth and her allegiance to the Saiyan royal family and the Frieza Army. One thing was punching out a Frieza Army member that intended to hassle her first, a whole different thing was declaring that she was done with Planet Vegeta in front of the prince of the planet himself. She'd have to deal with Vegeta, with the king and maybe even Lord Frieza.

Chayote would have to deal with what would come next.


	124. Fava Beans With A Bit of Garlic

"So, if you're here, I reckon Nappa's already dead?" Vegeta turned his nose up. He didn't look like he was offering even a tiny bit of leeway in terms of hearing Chayote pleading her case or asking him to spare Earth. This was just the scenario Chayote dreaded the most – she'd have to confront the Saiyan prince and fight to protect Earth against not just her own people but the royalty she still felt submissive toward.

"I doubt it. The blockhead can take plenty of damage. He's in no condition to fight though," Chayote replied, adamant about not taking her eyes off of Vegeta for one moment as he was far too dangerous of an opponent to underestimate. Even after duking it out with Bardock, Chayote could sense his Ki soaring above anything she's ever sensed before.

"Tsk, a Saiyan that can't fight is of no use. May as well have doomed him," Vegeta grit his teeth in disgust. "That's too bad though, he was quite useful as a meathead he always was. He lasted by far the longest in my service, more than I would have expected of a mid-class Saiyan warrior."

"My prince," Chayote took to her knee. "If there's any chance of it, I'd be willing to serve by your side if you spare this planet. Given how I have beaten Nappa in a one-on-one fight, I would be more useful to you than he was."

"Pathetic," Vegeta turned away in disgust. "Your power level is abnormal for your class, I'll give you that, but you've got an ounce of Saiyan pride left in you. Belittling yourself to have a lump of useless space rock spared? Defying your prince by intercepting his justice and protecting some rebellious dirtbag? You will be useful, in giving you one final lesson that no matter how strong low-class garbage might get, they'll never even begin to measure up to the rank of the Saiyan elite."

Chayote clenched her fists and rose from the ground. Deep down her trust in her king and her folk has been shaken though it wasn't that which made her skin flush with red. It was the embarrassment and the thoughtless madness that it brought to be. She didn't want to oppose her prince, she didn't want to strike him or defy the Saiyan royalty but just like the case always was when her fit of rage came into play – she couldn't help it.

So be it. Just for once, Chayote felt kind of glad to submit to that primal force bubbling up deep down inside her and roar out, let her Ki unfurl and power her up to her very limit. She was anything but nobody. She was the self-appointed queen of Planet Babari and what she's learned from her subjects was that sometimes letting loose and being proud of one's own strength was nothing to be ashamed of.

"Growl and show your teeth, it won't change the purity of your blood one bit," Vegeta smirked and took a fighting pose.

Chayote didn't charge into the fray of battle blindly, instead, she chose to circle her prince before driving her entire body right into his. There was no grace or elegance behind her movements. Martial arts became sashed and locked away in the more rational place of her mind. Now Chayote just had to fight for the fate of Earth where she had found her paradise and the martial arts that she had learned would have conflicted with the wrath she unleashed.

Vegeta answered Chayote's charge by locking his arms with hers. He turned awkwardly to confront her, throwing some of his potential for physical force away as he couldn't build up nearly as much vigor to overpower his opponent as he'd have liked but he humored his very physical opponent with a clash of strength. There it was, that cocky smile.

Something snapped, though it wasn't another barrier preventing the rage unfurling in Chayote's mind from leaking out. It was something painful, something in her hands. The pain forced clarity back into Chayote's eyes. Despite being larger than her opponent both in terms of bulk and in terms of height, Vegeta's fingers dug deep into her hands and began pushing her backward, bending her to where Chayote could have sworn her knuckles would soon chatter from the force affecting them and her wrists would dislocate while her spine broke into two.

A feeling of weightlessness overtook the agony of hitting an immovable object and struggling against it in a contest of strength as her opponent pushed her in by suddenly canceling all of his force out and leaning back. Everything went white. Vision returned with a tripling haze of dizzy, Chayote was up in the sky while her opponent was floating on his back by the ground with both of his feet thrust upward. That didn't last for long as Vegeta quickly dashed in pursuit and outraced Chayote in her ascent. The female Saiyan could barely react and correct her positioning in time. A blackout followed by loud shrieks, Chayote didn't need to see it, the martial artist inside her read the double ax handle slam before it hit her in the head but just reading the move was of no use if she couldn't react to it.

Even after besting Bardock and wasting a decent percentage of his battle power on that venture, Vegeta was still vastly more powerful than her. Opening her eyes and letting be flushed back into the reality of the heated battle was a struggle. All that Chayote could hear in the haze of black and popping, bright sparks was the sandbox talk of the awesome might of the king of all Saiyans, the awesome King Vegeta who was said to possess a power level of 10 000. Screw that! Prince Vegeta was several times stronger than that.

It was tough comparing power levels with Ki signatures. Feeling Ki was like staring at a raging fire, comparing the size and heat of that fire with a number just seemed sort of pointless though some rough comparisons might have been made. If Chayote possessed a power level of around 600 when she came down to Earth and the likes of Raditz were about 1500, Vegeta might have surpassed Goku's brother dozens of times.

"Hot… Red!" Chayote yelled out, jumping to her feet from the small crater she had made and swatting the chunky rubble of mossy boulders aside from her ascent. A pulse of red ether emanated from her body but died out as quickly as it came out.

"What was that meant to be?" Vegeta mocked the female Saiyan. "Hot-Red? Does that refer to the embarrassment I must feel as a prince for governing over someone as pathetic as you?"

Pride. Absolute certainty over victory and acceptance of no other outcome than that. Those were the emotions necessary for the blaze of Hot-Red though how was Chayote supposed to call for that? How was she supposed to feel pride facing Saiyan royalty, an opponent vastly overpowering her? It would have taken an imbecile like Kakarot to feel absolute refusal to lose in the face of such an opponent, to dismiss the imposing stature of prince Vegeta and blast right through his menacing power.

She was nothing like that. Even as a martial artist all that Chayote could do was try to catch up to the Earthlings that trained their entire lives, try and play a role of a martial artist who had a clue about what she was being taught. She wasn't even chosen by Korin or given the bell to ascend to God's Temple the normal way like the rest. Kakarot was a lot of the same but his mind was completely empty, rendering it perfect to fill with all that martial arts stuff. Even when Chayote faced the truth and gave in to the rage that was her only defining quality – all that meant was that she rushed at her enemy with raw power. If that power was insufficient – she was as good as dead.

For all the flack she gave Nappa, she was a lot of the same…

"Hmph… The state of the flock that a ruler governs over is a reflection of the ruler. I cannot stand and allow your pitiful existence to stain my pride as the prince of all Saiyans!" Vegeta proclaimed before extending his hands to his sides and forming a pair of bright Ki flashes in both of them. Instead of lobbing them at his opponent, the Saiyan prince thrust his hands and the flashing Ki, unleashing a hail of barraging Ki blasts at his opponent.

Afterimages of Chayote flickered throughout the island, she utilized every trick of efficient movement on the battlefield that she could access from the chest of teachings she thought sealed but one that she returned crawling back to. Power had failed her, power was something elementary, it was only effective against lesser power so Chayote once again had to beg the forgiveness of her skill and hope that she could work in sync with her own body rather than a heated sum of its parts.

A fusillade of golden, flashing domes of light covered the island, reducing it to crumbling rumble that sunk to the ground. Vegeta could only marvel at the destruction that a mere flick of his power had wrought and look carefully for the signs that the Saiyan he thought he had blasted away and sunk under that ruined island could still surface and continue the battle.

"Hmm?" Vegeta focused his attention at a glowing orb of emerald green underwater. One that he considered highly unnatural as he had not seen anything of such a nature forming naturally on Earth. The emerald flash began changing its pitch, brightening until it turned golden. Then Vegeta froze in the presence of a rumbling roar and prepared himself for something big, something that might have threatened even him.

"Fava Nova!" Chayote roared out, emerging from underwater encased in a bubble of Ki roughly the size of the island that she sank deep down together with. In the face of such a rush attack, Vegeta decided to change his approach, curling his fingers and placing both his hands together at chest level, facing the same direction. As the golden energy sphere closed in, a round aura of purple Ki formed around the Saiyan prince as well.

"Galick Gun!" Vegeta yelled out, thrusting both of his hands forward to respond to Chayote's charge with a ground-shaking energy wave. A fuchsia-colored beam of Ki slammed against Chayote's nova of golden Ki and proceeded to compete with its force with an attempt to overwhelm it with its own world-breaking power.

"N-No way!" Vegeta grunted, realizing that Chayote was pushing through the Galick Gun and seeing the spiral at the end of his beam dissolving closer and closer to him. On the other hand, the size of the golden nova of Ki threatening to engulf and devastate the Saiyan prince was drastically dropping as well, threatening to deflate completely before it could inflict any damage.

"Take this!" Chayote yelled out, with nothing but faint, golden overline being left of her technique by the time she charged up to her opponent with a fist locked and loaded into the position. With his hands still stuck and invested into the Galick Gun beam which was no more, Vegeta could only exclaim in surprise before the thundering right hand clocked him in the jaw, sending him crashing down into a faraway island and blowing up the volcano present in its center.

With her twitching right hand, Chayote wiped the slobber and blood off of her lip only to keep very close attention to the Ki signature of her opponent on that island. She didn't rush right next to the next battlefield, choosing instead to regain all of the stamina and strength that she had squandered, gambling it all just to throw one good punch at her opponent.

Big fat nothing that did to him. All that she could end up doing is throwing one good punch, all that it cost was the Ki necessary to pull off her strongest technique. Meanwhile, her opponent very nearly blew her away with a Ki wave that he didn't have the proper time to charge up to its full power in the first place. There was only so much that martial arts and a difference in skill could have covered for. The gap between her and her prince was so wide that Chayote was ready to buy what he was selling.

A scornful battle cry filled the darkening skies as a pillar of blue erupted the volcano and blew it right up into a shower of pebbles in all directions as the Saiyan prince ascended from the rubble, wiping the blood off of his face where Chayote managed to crack his lip a tiny bit with her right hand. A vein was pumping on the prince's forehead just on the left to his widow's peak. Vegeta's face was twisted to an almost cartoonish proportion with ire about what had just happened.

"You impudent wench! I had planned on blowing up this entire planet with you still in it so that you didn't have to grieve its loss too much but now you've done it! I'll beat the life out of you slowly, methodically, and without any hint of mercy!" Vegeta oozed with menace as he proclaimed his threats, shaking in what he perceived to be wrath.

The prince's Ki had taken a nasty dip in that last clash. Not because of the supercharged punch that Chayote hit him with, it was because of his own beam that he hastily threw at her. He didn't control the force of that attack right, the prince just knew the feeling of his power surging through his body and threw that at his opponent blindly. It was by no means anything spelling out hope for Chayote, but perhaps the Earthlings could finish him off after she's already dead. Yes. Even now, Vegeta was getting close to the range where Piccolo could have been able to hold his own against him.

Her lessons in Planet Babari appeared to have been all the wrong ones. At least the way she interpreted them. Just being proud of her rage and taking it as a normal part of her identity wasn't enough. Chayote needed to know when exactly to let out her range and when to reel it back, let the martial artist inside her take over, someone capable of making a coherent plan. Soon enough she'd need the rage monster to endure the pain, to push the Saiyan prince some more so that the others could finish fending the Saiyan prince off.

Vegeta thrust his arms out in front of him, unleashing a barrage of Ki blasts from them. Chayote vanished and left her afterimages to lure more and more Ki blasts from her opponent. She thought to blindside Vegeta and move in from his left but the enemy was too fast, too strong, the block that met her wrist was like hitting trying to whip an iron rod with a leather belt, her meek force just bounced off meanwhile Vegeta's cross threw Chayote off balance and collapsed all of her defenses and complicated thought.

The punches just wouldn't stop. The prince continued to throw his arms at her upper section, utilizing similar motion as his previously displayed affection for barrage Ki blasts. Those damn strikes were too good, too strong. It was like their overwhelming power and the damage they inflicted robbed Chayote of the few precious microseconds she could have used to prepare for the next one. With how much they completely threw her off-guard, the female Saiyan was left completely in the prince's mercy.

It felt like a sledgehammer had hit her on the gut, Chayote wheezed all of her air out and felt like throwing up. Her whole mouth sunk with the taste of blood. Then the prince was back with the upper section again, an uppercut to further devastate his opponent and an elbow strike to follow up with his raised arm that furthered the horrendous injuries to Chayote's gut and sent her crashing down to the island. The dark skies lit up with a barrage of Ki blasts ravaging the battlefield and leaving the island rended with fissures, gleaming with a golden shine from the blasts of Ki that Vegeta showered it with.

The prince wasn't kidding about his plans. Chayote coughed blood up and rolled back, dashing and vanishing from the harm's way. She was in luck that her opponent favored barrage Ki blasts this much, they weren't too accurate, to begin with, leaving her with greater than normal chances of avoiding them through skilled movement. Choosing to postpone grieving over her devastated mid-section, still coughing up blood, Chayote chose to give in to instinct and rage and push through the Ki blasts, leaning and racing around them and meeting her prince with her hands locked around his head. Vegeta looked properly taken aback by such a curious method of attack.

A headbutt given origin through pure madness blanked out both combatants for a while, or so it seemed, Chayote jumped right back into action, beginning to push her opponent by applying some measly pressure in order to force him to delve deeper and deeper into his hidden resources of strength. Doing her best to play into her desperate plead for lady fortune to have his enemy burn through enough of his strength to where the Earth could protect itself after Chayote had paid her dues.

Vegeta snapped back into the heat of the battle just fast enough to see Chayote, blinded by her own ferocity and spitting up her own blood right up in his face. The prince panicked to throw his leg up, in an attempt to outrace his opponent as he had done up until now, using his superior speed to knock her out of whatever semblance of second wind she was in. Chayote was gone, Vegeta's foot cut through just an afterimage while the female Saiyan roared behind her prince, smashing her elbow into his back and forcing the Saiyan royalty to exclaim in pain as well.

"This… This can't be happening! I'm a Saiyan prince! How dare you shed my royal blood!" Vegeta's hair sharpened and spiked up into an even thicker rise over his head as he raged on, turning around to face the rest of Chayote's exploding fury. He was too tough to sustain any lasting damage from Chayote's blows but he sure as heck could get even more pissed off, make even worse mistakes, and waste even more strength.

A hammer strike to Vegeta's temple, the head of the prince snapped back into place, glaring at his pathetic subject with an even hotter ire than he'd have been up until this point. Chayote pushed the prince back with a rough shove and, utilizing the distance she had just gained, charged flipped over to grab the prince's neck and spin him over her vertically in order to slam him into the ground.

A shockwave sent Chayote flying, it simultaneously bashed against every bone in her body, leaving the injured Saiyan reeling and clutching her mid-section as she recovered to witness the rest of the prince's explosive wave that swatted her aside from her attempt to slam the royalty's face back into the dirt. She could sense Piccolo's Ki far off, coming at her from the west. It was still a few minutes away from here, the Namekian was not wasting any Ki by hurrying to get to her.

On one side, it was so cruel that Chayote would have cracked a grin if she wasn't struggling against drowning in her own blood, the reincarnation of the Demon King showed absolutely no interest in rushing in to save the Saiyan that once opposed his predecessor though it was also a bit smart. This way, he'd be able to clash against Vegeta's dwindling battle power with all of his own. After the prince had disposed of Bardock and Chayote, his battle power surely would dwindle enough for someone as mighty as Piccolo to finish the job.

It sucked that it had to be Piccolo. This way the Dragon Balls would be put into risk but… It had to be him, he was the only one powerful enough at the moment to take it over from here. Chayote reeled back and winced in pain, the moment she started thinking clearly, the agony of the beating she had taken so far returned. That cruel, pestering thought that things would have to get messy and a lot worse before they'd get better.


	125. Everybody Goes Bananas

A quivering, bruised hand emerged from the ocean and grabbed hold onto the rocky shore. A tall, broad-shouldered body of a bald man gasping for air emerged soon after and crawled up, just barely managing to pull his body out of the water. The man collapsed and turned on his back, wheezing at the sky in an attempt to breathe some of his lost strength back into his lungs.

The brief shine of the sun turned dark, confusing the battered Saiyan as he had come to enjoy the soothing gleam of the sunlight as if drawing strength from it. Nappa opened his eyes only to see a surly, green scowl looking down at him. One belonging to a Namekian of shamrock skin, pointy ears, and antennae resting atop of the alien's head. Maybe it was because of his position of weakness or maybe it was because of the beady eyes of the Namekian, Nappa wriggled on the stony shore, feeling uneasy before this potential new threat.

"A Namekian… On Earth?" Nappa grumbled through pain, stopping to cough blood out from his lungs as the female Saiyan that left him in this sorry state had done a number on him. "What a surprise to see you… On the whole other side of the universe…"

"Hmm… So, the Saiyan really did rebel against her own kind and beat you to a pulp, that's interesting," Piccolo smirked looking down at Nappa before tilting his head up and examining the flashes of light and air distortions in the distance. He didn't even need to sense the clashing Ki, just listening to the thundering rumbling was enough.

"It doesn't matter, Vegeta's going to put her down… Like a disobedient bitch that she is… Vegeta is by far the strongest Saiyan out there. Just a year ago his power level was a mere 18 000 and now… It rivals that of the Ginyu Force. Heh, at this rate… His real target… Lord Frieza himself will begin trembling very soon," Nappa laughed out through bloody agony.

"You shouldn't keep your hopes up. It's not like you'll live to see that happen," Piccolo looked down at the broken Saiyan. "I don't see your partner letting you stick around with those injuries and being a burden on him. I know the conquering type, that's what I'd do, anyway…"

"Damn it!" Nappa cursed. "To be killed by some Namekian in some rundown, rocky corner of the universe… What do you even want from this planet?"

Piccolo extended his hand down, pointing his palm to Nappa and yelled out. His palm released a flash reducing the broken Saiyan to nothing but ashes that soon scattered all over the island and its uneasy oceans due to the accumulating storms in the distance. After disposing of the Saiyan, the Namekian looked up toward where the two forces were colliding.

"Sometimes I wonder about that myself…" Piccolo muttered, gritting his teeth and twisting his face into a scorned scowl.

* * *

"Solar Fist!" Chayote yelled out, placing her hands close to her face and closing her eyes, shutting herself off from Vegeta's rush and his fist that twitched just inches from her jaw.

The Saiyan prince staggered back in mid-air, bashing about with his elbows as he tried desperately to rub and scratch his eyes back into a prime fighting condition which the white, blinding light had robbed him of. Chayote was quick to utilize the opening she had created for herself by diving down at her opponent from above with a missile kick.

A spinning elbow strike from behind stopped Vegeta's fall and turned the Saiyan around as his opponent had snapped away diagonally behind him planning to intercept his fall and throw all of her strength out there to leave as many dents on him as she could before the inevitable happens and someone needs to take it over from her.

A flurry of crosses from both left and right, almost mirroring Vegeta's own striking pattern as from the perspective of a fledgling martial artist like Chayote it seemed quite solid, emphasized the statement she made to the prince. Finally, in Vegeta's blinded stagger she found her opening, the brawling Saiyan woman flipped over her opponent in mid-flight and tilted him over her head back-to-back in a crucifix-like pose before driving him down and slamming him hard enough to reduce the island beneath them to dislodged, drowning rubble.

All this beating, all this effort and all those openings she found and exploited or created but none of it mattered. The prince barely bled out any of his strength from that beatdown and he emerged from the rubble just more irked than before and more willing to crush the body and spirit of his more skilled but far weaker opponent. In any other battle, one opening like this would have given Chayote the bout, now she had to bleed and break for every bruise she left on Vegeta's cheek.

"You're fighting so hard for this planet you're trying to protect. It's, of course, entirely pointless but it makes me wonder if you'd have fought with the same ferocity if it was for your own world," Vegeta wiped the blood off of his lip, spitting aside in frustration when he saw a red spot on his glove.

"Of course, prince Vegeta…" Chayote replied with a longing tone. "Most of my life I wanted nothing more than to fight with everything I have for my world and my people, to fight in Lord Frieza's army."

"That's not what I asked, runt, I asked if you'd fight the same way for the Saiyans. I don't give two craps about what you think about Frieza," Vegeta looked outraged that Chayote thought the two were one and the same.

"B-But… Aren't you working for Lord Frieza?" Chayote tried not to lose her breath due to emotional shocks during the brief downtime before one or both of them would have had enough and the punching, kicking and blasting could resume.

"Are you joking!?" Vegeta thrust his palm, blasting a wayward Ki wave in Chayote's direction just out of animosity that comment made foster within the prince's chest. "It makes me more pissed than even irritating gnats like you do to bend my back for that cocky bastard but his hour will come soon enough! Who knows, maybe even this little planet will be of some use to contributing to my Saiyan power?"

Chayote smashed her hands at the coming blast, redirecting it toward the ocean beneath her while letting her wrists absorb most of its power so that the blast wouldn't threaten the integrity of Earth itself once it detonated. The blast's strength resonated through her wrists, making Chayote wince at impact but by now she's been powering through the limits of her body this whole brawl already, what was a few more cracked bones to that? She could feel Vegeta's follow-up coming thanks to Chayote's martial artist's instincts and her Ki sensory. The soles of Chayote's feet hit Vegeta squared in the chest as he rushed in from behind her to elbow her in the back when he thought she had been distracted by his blast.

As the female Saiyan proceeded to clash with the prince up close, the thoughts couldn't stop rushing through her head. It was distracting and it didn't let her emphasize most openings she saw at all. Bardock was so determined that the son was a spitting image of his father and King Vegeta was known amongst the entire universe as an unfaltering commander under Frieza's control who supported and seconded any notions put forth by his master. While Chayote recalled the vibe around the Planet Vegeta being a tad more rebellious and the talks in the barracks being more in favor of the king fostering some secret plot against the tyrant, the talk around the universe both times she roamed it to some extent supported that the king bent his knee for good this time.

"He's toying with me…" Chayote thought to herself. That would have made sense if Vegeta truly did feel rebellious toward his tyrannical master. It would have made so much sense to get injured in most of his missions so that he could grow his strength until it rivaled that of Lord Frieza.

The thought of being treated as some training machine put some gusto into Chayote's fists and elbows. She swung them with greater ferocity, using angles that felt alien to Vegeta and she could tell that the Saiyan prince was unfamiliar with martial arts, combatting opponents that approached battling as she did at the beginning of this scuffle – with brute strength and speed. Her elbows and short distance clothesline charges landed as she intended them to, one jumping elbow even left a red dot, too miniscule to bleed yet on the prince's forehead but despite her hits connecting they barely felt noticeable by the figure of royalty at all.

Chayote's uppercut threw Vegeta's head back, extending his neck to what felt like an uncomfortable extent but the Saiyan prince just looked back down at her with a snarky and mocking expression, as if challenging her to do more, to hit him harder than this. Chayote complied with that, swinging her fists around like hammers and bashing them against the prince's face while manipulating her body to avoid his playful counterattacks that were just fuel to her fire. All the steam was building up, it had to go somewhere!

Her leg shot up in a rising motion, aimed right at the center in between the legs of the Saiyan prince. The scorned elite howled in pain as the unbelievable Ki swelling up in his entire body turned off for just one blink to allow his body to soar up and over the stormy clouds just so he could endure this moment of grueling torment on his lonesome.

Chayote snapped away from her location. Pursuing her fleeing and disgruntled opponent, guided solely by her Ki sensing abilities and thruster a punch right to his none before kneeing him in the crotch again. None of the martial arts masters she studied under taught this, it was something that came to her when all went blank but, since it worked for the moment, Chayote kept going. Her legs whirled like a buzz saw trying to chop the stalwart Saiyan prince down but she only succeeded in relocating him down on a crashed and abandoned ship by the shoreline.

"You'll pay for this, you wench!" Vegeta's face was red, the rage veins were popping all over his face and wrath had his eyes all bulged out from their sockets as he swore that an end would come for the female Saiyan sooner rather than later.

"You don't look too injured to me. Don't think just these injuries will amount quite to a Lord Frieza rank power-up, you know…" Chayote taunted her opponent. While letting him toy with her would have been absolutely the right call, just lower her head and accept being treated like just a sparring partner by her enemy, nobody had ever accused Chayote of being smart and the Saiyan wasn't about to allow this tradition to start.

For a second there, hesitation had quenched some of Vegeta's outrage. He truly was contemplating on settling down and letting his opponent, a rare breed that actually had the capacity to challenge him for some time and could even injure him if she fought at full strength, keep wailing at him so that he would return to Frieza with far greater strength than he had now, perhaps even rivaling Frieza's own.

"You love this planet so much… Letting you die while knowing that your precious Earth would soon follow you seemed cruel enough before, but I figured out a far more cruel punishment for a disobedient wench such as yourself!" Vegeta laughed out, raising his right hand up before him, like holding something invisible before his opponent. "Normally it takes seven million zeno units of Blutz Waves to trigger the transformation into a Great Ape monster but no matter… I still have my way!"

Vegeta taunted Chayote with an appetizer for the punishment he would use for her impudence when he formed a sparking ball of Ki in his hand, a combo of Earth's own atmosphere with Vegeta's Ki. A ball of power that floated in Vegeta's hand though it didn't appear to be threatening by itself at all as it had a far weaker Ki signature than even the wayward Ki wave that Vegeta launched at Chayote earlier.

The prince clutched his fist and allowed the ball of energy to expand, covering the entire cloudy sky with its luminosity and dispersing the clouds that obstructed the view to its light. Vegeta didn't look at it immediately, instead choosing to scowl back down to Chayote with a mean smirk on his face.

"This precious planet of yours, we'll destroy it together!" Vegeta clenched his fist out in front of him as he proclaimed the punishment that he meted out. Before Chayote could object, Vegeta snapped right up to her face and punched into her already decimated gut, reducing Chayote to a state of helplessness as he grabbed hold of her hair and lifted her limp body to a stranglehold and forced her eyes up to have Chayote look at the Power Ball he had created.

"Once lowly trash transforms into a Great Ape, they are incapable of any sense of control. Saiyan elite, on the other hand, maintain the ability to control themselves easily. In that primal state, your disobedience will fade away and you will follow your prince into battle. You'll have no other choice!" Vegeta muttered by Chayote's ear as the Saiyan struggled against the electric shake that appeared to be taking control over her body and force it away from her.

No! He had no right to do this! Chayote wanted to struggle, to resist the transformation even if she knew that it was impossible. Nobody had ever managed to resist the Great Ape transformation through the force of will. If what Vegeta said was true and she'd end up a mindless rage monster while he'd maintain all of his control not only over himself but over Chayote as well, she'd end up being the one who would kill all of the Earthlings and wipe this planet out.

It was wishful thinking to ponder on if Vegeta was lying or not about being able to control the mindless Great Apes through example. It made a whole lot of sense that the royal family of the Saiyan race would have had such an ability. King Vegeta and his line had been in charge of the Saiyan race longer than Chayote had the patience to read about it and such an ability would have been a prime example of why that was the case.

Why? Why would it all have to end like this!? With her reduced to just a mindless drone in the hands of her prince?

"Well… Isn't this what you've always wanted?" Vegeta's loathsome voice still echoed over the surface of black tar in which Chayote felt her consciousness tumbling down into as something greater, more primal took control. "To be a soldier? I'm gifting this opportunity to you, now fight!"

* * *

Piccolo rushed to the scene where Chayote and Vegeta should have been fighting and looked around, frantically looking for signs that the battle might have concluded. He sensed a couple of signatures farther to the north. It seemed like this battle just wouldn't be contained in either one of the islands or the archipelago itself. Chayote's Ki was approaching a critical point by now, it didn't make much sense for Piccolo to wait for Vegeta's Ki to drop any further before engaging him in battle and relieving the Saiyan of her fight.

It might have been a tad cruel by human standards but Piccolo didn't care much for the Saiyan woman. He was perfectly fine letting her clobbered as long as that meant Vegeta's strength dipped some more and he'd have an easier time blasting the Saiyan into oblivion himself. There was this odd trigger inside of Piccolo that the Namekian could not explain. A worrying need to prevent Chayote from dying which was alien to him but a part of him nonetheless, it might have been something his predecessor knew or felt and it wasn't too hard for Piccolo to uphold that instinct rooted inside him but no unexplainable itch swore him to keep the Saiyan safe. As long as she lived - he couldn't have cared less about how badly she got messed up.

A ball of light made Piccolo cover up his face as it expanded in his eye-level. The Namekian hissed at it before his eyes became accustomed to its radiance and he took off toward it. He wasn't sure as of yet what it might have been as it didn't have a notable Ki signature in of itself but at this point, it didn't matter. It was his turn to take it over from Chayote. Piccolo stopped in place, stunned by the shock of the chilling sight before him.

Two Great Apes roared out, spreading rampant shockwaves across the area that shattered nearby mountains on the shoreline with the volume of their voice alone. One of these two still had traces of the Saiyan armor on them, suggesting it to be the stronger of the two invading Saiyans whereas the other one was far larger than Piccolo recalled it ever being but its essence felt familiar – it was Chayote.

The bare Great Ape followed its armored peer, staying not too close behind it as the first one showed the path for the second. Chayote must have been gravely injured before the transformation as the Great Ape was snarling with blood from its nose, forehead, and bleeding profusely from its mouth too with it being impossible to tell slobber from blood. It moved slowly and held its arm clutching its abdomen while it wobbled after the monster it saw as its leader.

Piccolo's eyes turned toward the shining ball, sparking in the sky with unnatural glimmer. He thrust his hand out. He didn't have much time before the Great Apes noticed him. Chayote should have been able to sense Ki but in her Great Ape form, she might not have been able to properly translate what those senses meant while the armored monster looked on ahead without noticing Piccolo floating a good kilometer behind him.

"Get gone!" Piccolo yelled out, firing a one-armed Explosive Demon Wave at the airborne Power Ball. The electric-colored blast engulfed the ball and sizzled it out into oblivion within a blink.

"What the…?!" the armored Great Ape turned around and froze in shock after seeing that the Power Ball was no more. It took the Saiyan invader another couple of moments to notice Piccolo floating in mid-air. Blood must have taken some extra time to boil and pump through that massive body as the Namekian regained his senses and braced himself for a beating while the armored Great Ape growled and opened its mouth to blast Piccolo away.

"Damn it, could it be taking longer for the transformation to revert after the artificial moon is destroyed?" Piccolo wondered to himself as he froze in place. He didn't think that he could avoid a blast of that magnitude in time. If what he heard the other Dragon Team members blabbing about was true and becoming a Great Ape multiplied a Saiyan's strength tenfold, he was a straight-up goner.

A thunderous crash threw the armored Saiyan off-balance as he very nearly tripped up himself. The bare Giant Ape roared out and fell backward, growling and whining in injury with a voice that was some freaky mixture of a groaning woman and a roaring beast. Rumbling in agony, the Great Ape threw elbows and wild strikes in a fit of rage about, pushing the armored Great Ape and having Vegeta miss his blast by it careening off to the side and blasting off into space.

"Damn it, you useless dead weight!" Great Ape Vegeta roared out, elbowing his fellow Great Ape in the face and knocking it flat on her backside to shrink back down and transform to human form as the Saiyan prince was soon to follow his clumsy subject. "I'll kill you… I swear I'll kill you all…" Vegeta huffed on his back, clenching his fists together and tightening the muscles all over his body as he rose to his feet.

Just as the Saiyan prince raised his hand above the head of the unconscious Chayote to cave it in, a tight grip locked around his wrist. Piccolo threw a straight punch into the gut of the Saiyan prince and threw him up into the air and away from the unconscious Saiyan before firing a mouth blast of his own after him. Vegeta slammed the blast away and stared back down at the irritating Namekian that had rushed in for the save.


	126. A Tactical Retreat of a Peerless Warrior

A tiny droplet of blood ran down Vegeta's forehead and disappeared inside his black eyebrows. The prince squinted his right eye a dash from one of few minor injuries that he had sustained in his playful scuffle with Chayote but otherwise kept his attention fixated on the bothersome Namekian that intruded his celebratory eradication of Earth's population.

"A Namekian, huh? You wouldn't happen to be the weapon that Bardock and his crew counted on to wipe my father and the Saiyan race out, would you?" Vegeta scowled at the green-skin with a hint of mockery to his voice.

"Bardock? You mean Son Goku's father? No, I'd have killed him if I found him. Did you by any chance do that already?" Piccolo wondered with a much cooler head than his Saiyan opponent. He had no reason to lose his cool, after all, he had all the winning cards as his Ki had a tiny edge over his worn-out opponent and the self-proclaimed demon had confidence in his superior skill.

"That bothersome wench interfered. Then you messed with my plan to have her murder all of her Earthling friends herself, what an irritating bunch you guys turned out to be!" Vegeta clenched his fists as the rows of his teeth ground against one another to the point where one would not have been foolish to assume that chips of the Saiyan's pearly-whites would begin shooting out in all directions soon enough.

"Sorry about that, it's just that I've settled on ruling this planet myself so you wiping it out would be a massive inconvenience for me…" Piccolo cracked his knuckles and spun his head around to stretch his neck out before taking a fighting stance.

"Hmph… A mere Namekian has no hope against a Saiyan elite!" Vegeta mocked Piccolo's determination to fight it out and took his own fighting stance.

The two fighters spent a few moments in silent consideration. They allowed the stormy winds to shake up the black sky and rattle the uneasy ocean. The clouds furled up in the sky, forming layers of choking gloom of toxic aggression and lightning bolts left bright lashes all around the pair. It was once one of the nearby mountains cracked in two from the intense air pressure and collapsed into the ocean that the pair of fighters vanished in a snap and charged at one another.

The two clashed with matching elbow strikes, pushing against one another for a short time. A stray lightning bolt threatened to electrocute the pair of floating fighters but the intense shockwave from their clash dissolved the bolt halfway and reduced it to harmless sparks that filled the air with static electricity which in no way impacted the negative polarity present between the two bruisers determined to punch one another until the other stopped moving.

After a relentless and swift exchange of blows, it was Vegeta's deceitful sweep that tripped Piccolo and made him swing in an uncontrollable spin before the Saiyan royalty. Vegeta proceeded to smack the spinning Namekian with the back of his hand, strengthening his strike with his entire body as he took a stalwart step forward and drew strength from the pillow of air he had formed from his Ki to remain afloat in the air.

Utilizing the same momentum, Vegeta spun around again with a knife-edge chop to the front of Piccolo's throat and then repeated the choking attack a couple of times as he ascended together with the opponent who suffered his beatdown. The beady eyes were quick to return to Piccolo's whited out eyes, Vegeta might have underestimated the Namekian physiology and its differences from what he was used to a tiny bit. The prince recovered by blocking Piccolo's counterattacks and kneeing the Namekian in the stomach, proceeding to pursue his airborne opponent after a strong cross strike with his fist. The Saiyan kicked his opponent even higher up in the air before vanishing up above his position and slamming him down into the ocean from above.

"So… You've chosen this planet to be your grave, Namekian?" Vegeta beamed a cocky smile down at his submerged enemy as a pair of powerful, flashing radiances formed in his hands. The Saiyan prince thrust his open palms, unleashing a hail of Ki blasts that bombed the underwater area and would have done a number on anyone trying to conceal themselves down there. After he was done, Vegeta crossed his arms and marveled at the rising domes of light that erupted into beaming pillars of light in their detonation.

An elongated arm emerged from underwater looking to grab Vegeta by his head and pull him down into the raging seas but the Saiyan avoided the arm from up above by moving backward. Much to his entertainment, the arm continued to pursue him but Vegeta managed to outrace its expansion before he saw the limit to how long it could expand and grabbed hold of Piccolo's wrist, pulling on it and forcing the arm's owner to snap back to his elongated limb and not the other way around.

Once Piccolo emerged and snapped his arm back to his body in a reversed retraction, Vegeta delivered a crushing blow to the Namekian's abdomen which forced a mouthful of slobber out of Piccolo's mouth and forced the Namekian to wheeze for oxygen as he wriggled in pain before the Saiyan royalty. Vegeta kicked Piccolo on the left side of his neck after dashing up a tiny bit and then smashed his face in with an uppercut before delivering a flurry of blows from each side of Piccolo's head, then he drove his head into Piccolo's chest, sending the Namekian flying.

Piccolo halted his retreat and wiped a trace of blood off of his lip, smirking at the huffing Saiyan. It was true that Vegeta's natural talent for combat had caught him by surprise but it also showed him a few things, namely that Chayote had forced Vegeta into a state where he lost more Ki by attacking his opponent and further draining his own stamina than getting hit himself. The Saiyan was pushing his body beyond its limits and, luckily for Piccolo, he wasn't the type of guy to admit that he was doing so in front of his opponent.

"Getting winded?" Piccolo mocked his opponent.

"Cocky bastard!" Vegeta ground his teeth, "Talk shit when you land one hit on me!"

Just as Piccolo prepared to trade more blows with his opponent, Vegeta vanished away. Piccolo had expected the enemy to try and relocate the fight to a different field, to try and flee the location and preserve his life or to try and execute one of the few opponents that Vegeta had already beaten to lash out his frustrations at them instead. What Piccolo did not expect was Vegeta appearing before him and pressing his hands right up to Piccolo's chest with a rich smile.

"What is it that you like to say? "Get gone"?" Vegeta mocked the Saiyan as he fired a point-blank Ki burst from both of his hands, enveloping the Namekian in his attack and blasting him away only to crash into the water with trails of smoke smoldering off of the dazed green-skin.

Vegeta floated in mid-air, his body hunched as it was becoming difficult to keep his body straight and tense. The head of the Saiyan prince bobbed downward as drawing enough breath to satiate his yearning for battle was becoming impossible and no matter how much time he took to catch his breath or how much effort he spent to gain precious moments to breathe properly, it just wasn't enough. Piccolo appeared from underwater with half of his purple gi in tatters.

"That wasn't half bad…" Piccolo admitted, patting his bruised chest.

"So, is this what your race has been up to since the Cataclysm?" Vegeta muttered in a lousy mood – his signature mood. "Sending your young across different planets to conquer them, you know, that's kind of our deal. If you plan on stepping out of line, it will be up to us to show you Namekians that the universe is only big enough for one race of conquering warriors!"

"Don't ask me about my planet or my people, I've never been on Namek and I've only accepted that I'm an alien yesterday," Piccolo stretched his aching body out. "I hope there won't be any hard feelings when I bust your bubble of grandeur here."

Without waiting for a response, Piccolo clenched his arms by his side. A malicious, scarlet gleam flared up in his eyes as Vegeta felt a tightening grip around his every muscle and realized that he was locked into place, unable to move. The Namekian reached out for his paralyzed opponent with his elongated arm and pulled him in for a devastating blow to Vegeta's gut with his free arm. After a flurry of kicks, Piccolo flipped backward, kicking his opponent away after hitting Vegeta in the chin with both of his feet as he did so.

Pursuing his opponent, Piccolo vanished and appeared with a powerful cross to Vegeta's gut once more, knocking all semblance of sense and control over his body that the Saiyan prince might have regained out of him again. Utilizing his opening, the Namekian kneed Vegeta in the face and sent him flying with a thrusting kick to his mid-section before using his elongated arm to pull Vegeta back in after grabbing hold of his leg and chopping him away, repaying the choking debt he had to the Saiyan prince with a knife-edge chop to Vegeta's throat of his own.

Vegeta couldn't just burst out from the water like he wanted to. Instead, the Saiyan prince dragged his breathless body out into the shore of a nearby sandy island and struggled to return to fighting shape. He had been struggling to breathe properly for a while and Piccolo had just nearly crippled him by smashing his throat in and preventing any air whatsoever from entering his airway. The ruthless Namekian charged in to utilize this occasion but Vegeta just took a mad dash into the skies, his vision fading and the Saiyan catching himself almost dozing off from the shortness of breath.

Piccolo snapped his neck to look up. The swelling of Vegeta's Ki threw the Namekian into a state of panic as Vegeta's Ki just exploded with a massive boost and the black clouds suddenly changed color as a shade of fuchsia began dominating the entire atmosphere while Vegeta prepared his world-shaking preparation for his mightiest Super Galick Gun.

"The fool is going to blow the Earth up several times over!" Piccolo hissed to himself as he hunched himself in intense concentration of his own Ki, allowing himself the luxury to channel his Ki the right way in preparation for his response. Malicious, emerald pulses of energy formed around the Namekian's clenched fists as the entire, sinking shore that he took platform on got blown away by the burst of Piccolo's Ki. The Namekian extended his arm out and grabbed hold of his wrist.

Even if Vegeta's blast ends up more powerful, channeling more of his slightly lesser Ki than Piccolo's blast, at least the Explosive Demon Wave would end up sapping some strength away from the blast and preventing the Saiyan prince of destroying the entire planet and sending its showering space dust blasting away to pelt at the other planets of the solar system. By taking the brunt of the blast himself, Piccolo would be saving the planet that was his by birthright.

As a massive, fuchsia-colored wave of Ki emerged from above the clouds and threatened to swallow up the entire region in its devastating pulse, penetrating all the way to the Earth's core and then obliterate through it like it was just rags as it beamed off into space, blasting to oblivion every space body it encountered until its massive strength ran out of juice, Piccolo extended his hand and let out all of the Ki that he had managed to muster up in that time focused into one attack.

It was Vegeta's mightiest Super Galick Gun against Piccolo's Explosive Demon Wave.

The two blasts struggled against one another for a brief moment but Piccolo's fears began ringing close to the truth. Vegeta's blast began devouring his own, relaying that this technique truly did channel more of Vegeta's slightly lower Ki than Piccolo's own Ki wave. The Namekian struggled against the inevitable fate but in the current state of things, he could only observe and delay when the Super Galick Gun would devour him whole and eat up his Explosive Demon Wave entirely.

"Damn it…!" Piccolo cursed as the blinding fuchsia light began coming closer and closer to where he could no longer accurately tell just how much of his own blast remained to oppose obliteration at the hands of Vegeta. If only he had an attack that channeled more of his Ki, something stronger than Vegeta's own technique…

Piccolo's aura turned bright turquoise as it began taking the shape of a floaty humanoid behind him. One with whited out eyes and oval-shaped head. Piccolo couldn't spare a second to look at whatever was happening with his desperate Ki as he was too invested in not surrendering in his vain struggle but he could feel as if though that same Ki began seeping back into him, inspiring clarity in his own mind. With that unison and control over his own Ki came an idea that required immediate attempt at the realization and just a little bit of luck to work.

"Tri-Form!" Piccolo chanted out as a golden outline beamed over his body that would have been impossible to tell due to the blinding light show all around him. In a flash of light, two more identical copies of Piccolo appeared behind him and extended their hands outward, forming their own Explosive Demon Waves and firing them alongside the dwindling original.

Vegeta lacked the breath to express his shock at the fact that his Ki wave began actually shrinking down and being pushed back at him. Just when he thought he had the Namekian, somehow, he had managed to channel more of his energy into the blast and drive it back home bit by bit. Now it was Vegeta who was in an identical situation to that in which Piccolo just was.

While Piccolo split his own Ki into three to form the copies, he managed to compensate for the fact that his Explosive Demon Waves only channeled a smaller fraction of his Ki than Vegeta did with his technique by firing three Explosive Demon Waves at once, even if the split ones were much weaker than the original, the sum of them managed to join into something that was just enough to push the blast back to the center of the clash and begin to push the epicenter of the clash back to Vegeta's direction.

With one final push, emphasized with the newly born desire to protect Earth, Piccolo roared out and finished the struggle by taking it back to his breathless opponent and blasting him away with it. As the fuchsia-colored chaos beamed off into the upper layers of the atmosphere, Piccolo's hands fell limp by his side as the Namekian fell on his knee, seeing sweat dripping from his forehead. He looked down at his shaking hands and breathed out a huff of relief, finding it much harder to fill his own lungs after firing his most powerful Ki wave three times just now.

"Tsk… What a sturdy son of a bitch!" Piccolo hissed as he turned his head up, his neck burnt with pent up debility as he did so. He could still sense Vegeta's Ki up above. The Saiyan prince must have somehow managed to slip off of the one-way ride to space and beyond and managed to stay afloat and alive up there but he hesitated to rejoin the battle. Vegeta's Ki had taken a mean number. In his current condition, any following blows even from a weaker opponent might have been fatal but Piccolo also lacked the strength needed to dash up there and finish the job.

With his arm shaking, Piccolo mustered up the strength to extend his hand aiming upward. He most likely would have missed any precision demanding shots but maybe his Chasing Bullet would have been just what the situation needed.

"Hey, Piccolo! I'd appreciate if you didn't kill the guy!" a voice rung in Piccolo's head, throwing him off-balance and off-aim. It was a powerful telepathic signal broadcasting an irritating, high-pitched, and energetic voice. The voice that Piccolo knew and hated more than anything.

"Son! Are you haunting me beyond the grave, you bastard!?" Piccolo shouted out into the sky.

"Teehee… I didn't think you'd hear me. I'm at this King Kai's place and he said that I can talk to the living by pressing my hand on his back. Between just you and me, I think he just likes back rubs…" Goku's voice continued to talk rubbish when every second seemed to count. For all Piccolo knew the blasted Saiyans, Vegeta's Ki might have exploded into unforeseen might just like Bardock's did earlier.

"You do realize I'm right here, Goku!?" another, lower-pitched, buzzing voice joined in on the frequency. It must have been that King Kai to which Goku referred to who channeled Goku's voice telepathically throughout the universe.

Piccolo turned his beady eyes to the west. He saw a beaming comet of white moving in on his direction. His sensitive ears could hear a mechanical hum and the popping of spaceship fuel being burnt in its engine. It could have only been the spacecraft in which Vegeta arrived on. The cowardly Saiyan prince planned to run away with his literal tail tug between his legs.

"Hurry up, Son, I don't have much time here. This trash is gonna run away and I mean to make him get gone! If you have a case to make, do so now!" Piccolo hurried his nemesis to speak quickly or get out of his way.

"Oh… We've been following the events down on Earth from here and… This Vegeta guy seems like a crazy-strong fighter. I kind of wanna go to space and fight him someday. Seeing those Saiyans pop out of nowhere from space really got my blood boiling and now I want to take Chayote up on her offer and go off to space to fight all of those strong guys out there!" Goku explained himself.

"Is that all!? Is that the reason you've stopped my hand? That's literally the most stupid reason I've ever heard, befitting a fool such as yourself, of course. I don't know what I expected from an imbecile like you! Now shut up and enjoy the fireworks!" Piccolo roared out as he fired a round Ki blast which automatically homed in on the aircraft that stopped over his head and corrected Piccolo's shaky aim from his worn-out arm by itself.

The Saiyan Attack Ball blasted off into space before the homing ball of light could reach and blow it up, finishing the Saiyan prince once and for all. Piccolo's mouth gapped ajar for a few seconds before he let out an infuriated roar into the sky.

"You fool, don't you realize what you just did by delaying me!?" Piccolo yelled out, wondering if Goku was still listening.

"Oh, so Vegeta escaped then? That's great…" Goku snickered.

"What's so great about it, you nincompoop!? He's a Saiyan, just like you! Probably even way worse seeing how he classified himself as an elite. He'll recover from these injuries and become a threat to not only our planet but the entire universe!" Piccolo tried scolding his nemesis in a way that even his thick head could understand but it didn't seem like Goku quite cared.

"Oh, I didn't know you cared so much about protecting Earth, that's good to hear. Anyway, I guess we'll have to work really hard to stop that from happening, anyway, King Kai's gesturing that it's his nap time soon so I guess I've got to go, see you guys when Gohan's done with his training, bye!" Goku said his farewells and the ambiance of the restless storm took over from there.

"Sooonnn!" Piccolo yelled out into the sky as if trying to reach his dim-witted rival all the way in the Otherworld with just his voice but soon collapsed from the wear of this tiring battle.

And to think that the humans used to call him a villain and a demon…


	127. Piccolo's Request

"Are you sure that all of the Saibamen are done for?" Bulma turned to Krillin with a look that stuck guilt onto Krillin's face even though there was no reason for it.

"I already told you, Bulma, we've checked it multiple times. It's not like those little things tried disguising their Ki so there's no way we've missed any," Krillin shrugged. He had no idea how he could have proved the fact that the Saibamen were all beaten any more than he already has.

"I just have to be sure, because if we resurrect all the people slain by the Saiyans or their cohorts, we need to know that the Saibamen aren't still rampaging around killing people," Bulma explained the reason for her paranoia.

"Wait, is that how the Dragon Balls work?" Bardock wondered. The Dragon Team had given him a whole different explanation earlier. "You just collect them and ask for what you want?"

Everyone looked at the Saiyan as if he was the village idiot. Dressed in a flowery shirt that he borrowed from Dr. Brief as while his wounds could have been healed quickly, his armor had been totaled in the brawl with Vegeta, Bardock shrugged.

"I guess it makes sense that I was given false information. You had every reason to think of me as your enemy," Bardock rubbed the back of his neck as he sighed dealing with the realization that he was lied to.

"This makes a very fine point, should we really be summoning the Divine Dragon with this guy around?" Yamcha pointed to Bardock. "What if he kills us all and takes the wish for himself?"

"Don't worry, it's going to be fine," Bulma turned to Dr. Puri who appeared to be shaking in awe before the splendor of the Dragon Balls laying in a formation before her. "Bardock helped us fend the Saiyans off and he's Goku's father, isn't he?"

"Hmph… You've got no reason to soil your pants. I'm not gonna kill you lot. I just want my son back. He's the reason I came to this planet, to begin with…" Bardock explained as he crossed his sinewy arms over his chest wearing a serious expression.

Dr. Puri nodded and gulped heavily. It wasn't clear what exactly summoned such a reaction in the young woman in the lab coat, if it truly was the presence of the Saiyan invader in their home or if it was the awesome spectacle of the crystalline orange jewels with stars on them and the promise for anything in existence being within their power to grant.

"Can ya guys hurry up? I'm gettin' hungry already and gettin' 'ere was a hassle already…" Yajirobe scratched his wild, black hair and picked his nose. He truly had been on quite an errand these last couple of days, tasked with gathering the Dragon Balls only to face the Saiyan threat and the Saibamen himself only to then have to deliver the gathered Dragon Balls to the Capsule Corp in West City again.

"Hey, when you make the wish, don't word it like that," Bardock asked. "Don't just ask for the humans to be revived. My own squad lost their lives fighting the Saibamen too. In their states, it wasn't much of a fight but they're good people, they deserve to be brought back too."

"Are you kidding me? They would have killed all of us if given the chance!" Bulma pressed her hands to her hips, casting an inflammatory glare in Bardock's direction.

"It's because of me. If I told them to treat you guys as allies, they'd have taken it without a second's hesitation. Our squad has a bond of loyalty that no other group of Saiyans share." Bardock pointed out. "They didn't deserve to be murdered like that. If they ever die, let it be in a proper battle."

"They're Saiyans," Tenshinhan brought up. "If we bring them back, wouldn't they have grown in power significantly?"

"No. They've been killed. Saiyans only grow stronger adapting to that which comes close to killing them but doesn't. Don't quote me on that, I've never heard of a dead Saiyan returning to life but I don't believe that death would have had any effect on their battle power," Bardock answered, still arguing for his case.

"It's not right to leave them dead when we can bring them back," Krillin joined in on the conversation. "We all made the choice to let them live when we beat them so it wouldn't be wrong to bring them back and fix the Saibamen making that choice for us."

"Wouldn't that also resurrect those other two Saiyans though?" Yamcha scratched his head.

"No. I'm not sure who killed the first one, it might have been Chayote, but Piccolo did join her on the battlefield so he's far more likely to have killed the first one. The second one didn't die at all. His Ki fled outside of our range during the climax of the battle. It's fair to say that Piccolo let him escape," Upa rubbed his chin, pondering on this problem.

"Why would he let that bastard escape!?" Bardock clenched his fists.

"Who knows? Piccolo's not here to explain his case. He might have helped us save the Earth this time but he's not part of the Dragon Team. He was just a third party whose interests lied in beating the Saiyans just like ours," Tenshinhan pointed out.

"I believe we should give Bardock's squad another chance," Upa stated. "After all, most of us have been on the wrong side of morality at least once in our lives, haven't we? We've all fixed our ways but we'd have never become the great protectors of Earth's peace if that chance at redemption would have been taken away from us."

"Well, if God himself thinks it's right, we can't possibly disagree…" Tenshinhan nodded. Upa approached the Dragon Balls and raised his arms over his head, calling forth for the Divine Dragon to appear and fulfill their wish.

The sky turned black in seconds with thick layers of noxious-looking, black clouds covering it. Lightning lashed, leaving bright lacerations on the gloomy horizon before one stray jolt hit the collected Dragon Balls and made them flash with bright light. One that beamed upward in the shape of a flashy pillar of light that soon began taking a shape of its own, coiling in a serpentine manner and wriggling, rising toward the sky as it did so. Just as soon as the beam of light took life of its own, it materialized into the form of a gigantic Divine Dragon breathing out hot air before the gathered observers.

"What is it that you want this time, state your wish!" the Divine Dragon exclaimed, shaking the ground beneath everybody's feet as he spoke in a booming and authoritative tone. Even Bardock had lost his cool and marveled at the Divine Dragon in respectful shock.

"Well… How to say it…" Yamcha rubbed the back of his head, growling and fussing to himself in how better to word his wish as they only had one shot at it.

"Please resurrect everyone killed by the Saiyans!" Bulma threw her fist out into the sky, sharing none of her ex-boyfriend's hesitation.

"Everyone ever killed by the Saiyans? That might be a tall order, I am not sure that I could do that… No, it appears that I am more powerful now than ever if that is truly your wish, I can bring back everyone ever killed by the Saiyans in the span of one year period," the Divine Dragon declared.

"More powerful… Than ever?" Upa pondered.

"What does that mean?" Dr. Puri approached the godly human with curiosity beaming from her face.

"If I had to guess, tying the Divine Dragon to Piccolo has made it grow more and more powerful, the more powerful Piccolo becomes – the greater is the Divine Dragon's power," Upa pointed out. "I believe that soon enough his power might become such that the usual limitations for wishes might not apply."

"What's wrong!? State your wish now!" The Divine Dragon grew restless, raising the tone of his voice and frightening most of those gathered.

"Divine Dragon, please bring back everyone good killed by the Saiyans or their cohorts on Earth," Bulma corrected her wish. There was no use in bringing back any bad folks that the Saiyans might have ended up killing and resurrecting people on destroyed planets would only serve to bring more suffering as they'd end up floating in the void of empty space until they died again.

"An elementary matter…" the Divine Dragon flashed his red eyes. Bardock pushed through Yamcha and shoved Chiaotzu aside to approach the great being before him.

"Did you resurrect my teammates too?" he asked the Divine Dragon, worried that they might not have qualified as "good" as defined by Bulma.

"I did not. Their bodies have been completely destroyed so there is no use in bringing their souls to Earth. When I resurrected one named Son Goku he also wanted to let you know that he won't be back from the Otherworld until he is done with his training," the Divine Dragon explained. Bardock collapsed on his knees, gritting his teeth in grief for his teammates that he had lost forever.

"Vegeta… You bastard… I'll make you pay!" Bardock bellowed into the clouded sky.

"Your wish has been granted. My job here is done!" the Divine Dragon declared with his form becoming lightning again and dispersing into a wild flock of sparks as the Dragon Balls rose from the ground, rotating in their perfect formation before they flew off to various corners of the Earth, becoming stone shortly after landing in their new locations.

"That's just like Goku to say that…" Bulma placed her hands over her hips, looking vexed by Son Goku's proclamation to the Divine Dragon. The sudden return of the television broadcast and the impromptu interviews of all the baffled folks that were certain they had died but had now come back to life breathed in new happiness into the room – the Saiyan threat was now done with.

"Hmmm… So those are the Dragon Balls…" Dr. Puri rubbed her chin, taking notes on a flimsy sheet of paper tagged to a wooden board.

"You don't need to take notes of how they work. We've dealt with them enough times to know that already," Bulma smiled at her new assistant. "Anyway, you've been a great help, Dr. Puri, you've stayed here and worked with me even when the entire world was in danger. I appreciate that sort of devotion, I'd promote you but, truth be told, you're already in the top spot available to employees due to your crazy qualifications."

"Perhaps I can take over the Capsule Corp then?" Dr. Puri turned to Bulma as the woman of curly, auburn hair fixed her glasses before canceling her serious expression, substituting it with a warm smile. "Just kidding, Bulma-san…"

Everyone but Bardock chuckled before Bulma stepped out in front of the group and demanded their attention. "Alright. We've not seen each other for way too long. I think it's been seven whole years since we've gotten together. What was it? Goku's wedding? That must be it… Anyway, I propose that we all get together in Kame House and catch up. After all, the Dragon Team seems to be ever-expanding and we need to strengthen these new bonds we've made along the way. Naturally, Dr. Puri and Bardock are also invited."

"Hmph… I'll pass." Bardock turned away. "I need to prepare for the assault on Planet Vegeta and my vengeance."

"That would be a mistake," Tenshinhan approached the Saiyan warrior and pressed his hand to Bardock's shoulder. It was something that Bardock didn't quite like but it was something that he tolerated for now. "I know a thing or two about vengeance and, in my experience, it is pointless and solves nothing. Given Vegeta's defeat, we are certain to have to deal with him in the future so your best chances at closing that chapter for you is by training and fighting alongside us rather than rushing off alone to your certain doom."

"What do you know!?" Bardock lashed out, pulling his shoulder from under Tenshinhan's hand and putting his fist in between the two. "I am a Saiyan warrior that draws power from the pain of his squad. It is clear that my nature is that of an avenger. Through my bond with my squad, I grow stronger. Vegeta threatened my wife Gine when we fought, I can't allow anything bad to happen to her. It's not safe for her on that planet anymore."

"Do you really think Vegeta will be rushing to Planet Vegeta?" Chiaotzu wondered. "Piccolo stopped him after all. Maybe he'll be headed somewhere closer where he can heal?"

"Hmmm… Maybe the little shrimp is right?" Bardock pondered. "Vegeta had his ass handed to him by low-class trash and a Namekian. The last thing he wants to do is to show his face around Planet Vegeta, parading in his pathetic failure and exposing the sensitive nerves behind the façade of his pride. That dick is going to go anywhere but Planet Vegeta."

"There. So your wife isn't in any immediate danger, is she? Even if your destiny is to strengthen yourself through bonds, your bonds have just been severed. You've burnt and raged but you've burnt those bonds out. There's no way you can draw strength from your squad again. So how about you begin forming some new bonds instead of pushing them all away?" Bulma got all over Bardock's face with her trademarked Earthling persistence which forced Bardock's angry scowl to fade as he leaned back away from the woman in embarrassment that he looked very keen on hiding.

"Fine. I have no idea where this Kame Island is but it has to have better clothes than this…" Bardock pointed at his unbuttoned flowery shirt that was multiple sizes too small for him.

"Hmm… I think that besides Muten Roshi's own shirts, you'll only find lewd bikinis and the Turtle Gi uniform there," Yamcha thought out loud.

"Heh, Bardock already looks like a spitting image of Goku. If he puts on a Turtle Gi, there'll be no telling the two of them apart!" Krillin pointed out, everyone in the room that knew Son Goku to erupt into a wild fit of laughter that only served to embarrass Bardock further.

* * *

"You're not with the rest of the chaff?" Piccolo approached Chayote from behind as the Saiyan sat on the edge of the God Temple, overseeing the vast horizon and wondering how God could see anything meaningful off of here.

"They're in danger around me. I always act like I'm doing my best to protect them but I end up putting them into only a deeper hole. If it weren't for you…" Chayote mumbled, looking more crushed and beaten than she was before Mr. Popo helped her recover from her injuries.

"Don't think I saved you from subjugation as a favor for you. I did so to better serve my own interests," Piccolo declared as if it was his obligation to deny any hints of decency budding from inside him every time he did something good.

"Yeah… Tells a lot when the worst demon we have to offer did a better job protecting the Earth than me. I thought I had my rage, my nature under control just because I accepted it but I guess just accepting your problems isn't the same as solving them," Chayote pointed out as she looked on ahead off of the tower.

"You can traverse through the universe, right?" Piccolo inquired.

"Yeah, it might take a while for us to get to the other corner of it but…" Chayote nodded.

"That doesn't matter. We can use Kami's spaceship. It's a whole lot faster than yours." Piccolo replied, making Chayote stand up and turn around as Piccolo's words sounded confusing. "I want you to bring me to Planet Namek. That's where I actually belong. That's where both my predecessor and Kami are from and that's our home. Just like you, it feels like I don't belong here."

"I can do that. That way you won't be a threat to Earth, though, you've had seven years to try something and you were the strongest warrior on this planet before Bardock's recovery from his injuries. It almost makes one wonder if you ever wanted to conquer this planet, to begin with," Chayote shrugged.

"That's exactly why!" Piccolo grit his teeth with a hiss. "Something's wrong with me. Whatever King Piccolo did by forcing the fusion with Kami, it's not natural. I… I sometimes am not sure about who I am or what I want anymore. Back when I clashed with Vegeta, some part of me I didn't even know was there emerged and inspired me to fight back. At that moment, it seemed like my entire body burned with the need to protect Earth, that need gave birth to the right answer to the problem," Piccolo pointed out as he looked at his own right hand as if he couldn't recognize his own body.

"If that part is so strong in you, are you sure you want to leave Earth? Why not just protect it?" Chayote wondered.

"Because… That's not me! Or even if it is, it's just a part of me. I can't be the only freak like this. Planet Namek must have all the answers. Planet Namek is the place where I belong, don't you think? You said it yourself – if I settle in there, I won't be here to threaten Earth anymore." Piccolo stated.

"Yeah, fine, I'll take you to Namek. With my spaceship it would have taken about three years but if you claim that there's a faster ship on Earth…" Chayote shrugged. "I used to have a really awesome spaceship that I used to gather the Ultimate Dragon Balls with but that one got totaled when I crash-landed on Earth."

"I meditated on the matter and I could access some vague images of a spaceship that looks a lot like the memories of my predecessor. It must be the spaceship that Kami used to get to Earth." Piccolo pointed out.

"Come to think of it, I do recall Mr. Popo mentioning something about a spaceship in Yunzabit Heights. I think we used it as a sample of tech when Dr. Brief built my spaceship…" Chayote nodded to herself. "Fine, I'm off to space too so I guess it won't hurt throwing you off on Namek as gratitude for saving my life and the whole Earth. I've come to like this little planet a whole lot."

"Heh, you've had to give up Paradise for it…" Piccolo smirked, revealing to Chayote that he had some of Kami's knowledge of her origins at least.

"Yeah well… I guess I've made my own little paradise here so I don't regret a thing," Chayote shrugged.


	128. The Wheels Are Turning

"Launch-san, you're still living with this old pervert?" Bulma turned toward the kitchen where Launch was working at some more party snacks for the upcoming gathering of the Dragon Team. It would mark the first time in over seven years that the whole gang would get together.

"Oh my…" Launch gasped and covered her mouth, shocked that Muten Roshi would ever be described that way. "Why yes, I do still live with Roshi-san. He's been very kind to me by providing me a place to live and a somewhat normal life for both me and the other me. I am very grateful to Roshi-san and helping him with chores is the least I can do!"

"How am I the bad guy in this situation?" Muten Roshi mumbled while sitting on the toilet and scratching his head. "You should see Launch-san when her hair goes blond, I'm the one being held hostage here against my will and doing the chores for her, honestly."

"Close the damned door when you're taking care of business!" Bulma growled and shook her fist over her head. "Honestly, I should have come here with the rest of the guys instead of rushing ahead…" she wrapped her arms over her chest as the blue-haired genius grounded her teeth away, seething in frustration.

"Say, say… You said that your new assistant would come, Puri-chan, was it? How come she wasn't with you?" Muten Roshi wondered, looking up from his less than inspiring position.

"Yeah… She said she needed some extra time to prepare. Find a nice dress and apply make-up and all that. Honestly, I think she didn't quite get just what kind of party this is going to be," Bulma sighed, letting go of the pent up aggression toward the pervy and crude old man seeing how she had been around him for too long not to know how pointless holding on to such feelings was.

"Oh! Puri-Puri… Paffu-Paffu…" Muten Roshi began chanting something on the crapper as he felt an imaginary set of breasts with his hands while the man's cheeks flushed with red. It took a heavy slam of the door to the Kame House to break him out of his trance.

"Old man, you should close the door when you're crappin'…" Umigame pointed out while crawling through the door. It was the most abhorrent detail that caught his attention first, the sea turtle only noticed the fact that Bulma was visiting later, flopping his flipper up in a welcoming gesture. "Hello, Bulma, it's nice to see you."

"Hey, Umigame, how's your son doing?" Bulma wondered.

"Never mind that!" Muten Roshi jumped off of the toilet and flushed it, hurrying to pull his shorts back on and unleash a torrent from the sink to wash his hands so that he could be done with it and give a good yelling at the loud cohabitant of his island for just bursting in like that. "Why did you have to bust in so loud for? Honestly, I'm over three-hundred years old, that's just asking for a heart attack!"

"Oh… Sorry… I completely forgot why I barged in… Say… What's the deal with that submarine by the island? Is it yours, Bulma?" Umigame rubbed his head with his flapper, a bit more relieved to have a potential explanation for the unnatural sight he saw.

"Huh? No way, I flew here by plane, and my plane's sealed up in a capsule," Bulma answered after Launch brought her some cold refreshments to enjoy until the rest of the crew got to the island. "What did it look like? Maybe the rest of the crew got here?"

Bulma turned to Muten Roshi and froze in place, almost dropping her glass of juice when she saw how serious the old man had turned all of a sudden. This was not a usual situation where Roshi acted like his usual, aloof, and pervy self. Bulma hadn't seen the old man so serious since Demon King Piccolo attacked.

"A bunch of Ki appeared all over the island," he stated with a dire tone of his voice before rushing to the door. Before slamming it open and walking out to face whoever had arrived at his island by that submarine which Umigame had mentioned, Muten Roshi turned around and looked at the women and the sea turtle. "Stay indoors, no matter what. I should be able to handle it and if not, the rest should arrive soon."

The moment Roshi opened the door, the fact that his island had been riddled with dug up patches of land became apparent. Metallic bulbs of Prussian blue stuck out from the ditches like some extraterrestrial garden that was about to bloom. When Muten Roshi walked out and stepped down from the steps and onto the grass and sand of his island, the bulbs began twitching. Like little drills, a handful of dwarfish creatures appeared from underground.

The enemy were tiny warriors with oversized heads, not entirely unlike the Saibamen that had terrorized the planet just a day ago. They had shells of dark blue on them on their feet, their calves, chest, and forearms while the rest of their flesh looked soft and stringy. Their limbs looked segmented like these tiny warriors were a mixture of an insect and a man of some sort. Their mouths had prominent insectoid features though the rest of their brainy heads looked more bird-like with maroon eyes focused on their prey. The tiny things let out giggling shrieks as they pointed their claws at Muten Roshi and prepared to pounce on him.

All of the odd warriors lunged at Muten Roshi at once but the old man extended his hand out, releasing a powerful Kiai blast that threw all of them aside like ragdolls. Once the creatures moved their focus away from Muten Roshi and struggled to return back to their feet, the weathered martial arts master rushed across the battlefield, delivering beatdowns to each unfortunate soul in his way. The attackers shrieked out though it was not out of pain but out of wrath that they were unable to lay a hand on the martial arts master.

The battered and bruised, blue dwarfs danced across the battlefield, dashing aside in an attempt to change the range between them and their superior opponent. Sunlight glistened and beamed off of Muten Roshi's sunglasses as the old man realized that these seemingly mindless fighting drones were very much capable of strategic forethought as he now found himself surrounded with the little shrimps extending their hands and forming spheres of Ki in their hands in an attempt to attack the old man from afar.

With grace and mastery of his own movement, Muten Roshi evaded each and every Ki blast in the flurry of attacks surrounding him and proceeded to blitz up to the warrior of the surviving quartet that he believed to be injured the most. Roshi flipped over his head to try and slam the beaten warrior to the ground but his attack was promptly blocked. A pair of others rushed in from the sides and locked Roshi down, rendering him effectively helpless. The old martial arts master was stronger than these little fighters individually though together in a group they posed a real threat to his life.

The odd, spliced warriors continued to rush up to Muten Roshi and throw fists at him, trying to beat him down while the pair held him tight. Given how battered and weakened those fighting drones were, Muten Roshi didn't feel all too much of the beating that they intended to deliver onto him. As more and more of his true power surged into his weathered body, the veteran of martial arts felt his muscles slightly swelling up and as that might flowed all over his body, Roshi found himself capable to slam the two warriors holding him at each other and kick them both aside with a jumping split kick.

These warriors weren't as loud as the Saibamen but they were every bit as reckless with their lives. Seeing how outmatched the lot were, they began rushing at Muten Roshi, overflowing with Ki. Had the martial arts master not been over three-hundred years old, he might have missed out on the impending reckless explosive Ki waves emanating from the bodies of the rushing fighting drones. The explosive waves they used decimated their broken bodies, allowing them to deliver a considerable blast even in their battered states. Noticing that he had his own home to take care of, Roshi punted the rushing, self-destructing soldiers aside where they could self-destruct without leaving a dent on him or his house.

"Whoever you are, show yourself, no more games!" Muten Roshi shouted out with a hint of heavier breathing as disposing of these spliced soldiers made him work up a decent sweat and served him as some fine training.

"My, my… I see that you are every bit as capable as you were back when you won the 13th World Martial Arts Tournament, Muten Roshi. No… Whom am I trying to fool? Far stronger!" a mechanical-sounding voice that came from the bubbling water by the shore of the Kame Island filled the air. "You've dispatched of my Bio-Men in no time at all, though, perhaps, if I allowed them to rush you on and on, even a master such as yourself would have caved…"

"Hmph… Beating an old man with a group of your footmen, what an accomplishment…" Muten Roshi mocked the speaker whom he assumed to be located inside the surfacing submarine when, in fact, the speaker was the submarine itself. The emerging vehicle was a pill-shaped cockpit of oxford-blue with a massive brain floating in a jar out in front of it and ridges of spiked, metallic teeth extending on both sides of the submarine.

"Don't you dare undermine the intelligence of great Dr. Wheelo! I will have you know that I am the genius who managed to reverse bio-engineer the remains of these green aliens that had invaded our planet and, of course, improved upon their limited design," the submarine appeared to be losing its temper for a brief moment there before composing itself. The ego revealed itself to be a sensitive subject with this talking vehicle.

Clawed hands began bursting from underwater as dozens of more Bio-Men took the stage, more and more of them shot out from openings within the corpus of the brain-decorated submarine where usual military submarines would have had hatches for missiles. The shot Bio-Men straightened out from their curled, cannonball-like positions and landed gracefully onto the beach, forcing Muten Roshi to take a defensive fighting stance. Each one of these was at least half of Roshi's own power and there didn't appear to be any limit to these biologically engineered soldiers.

"You'll forgive me if I'm all out of medals to give. I'm not a man that appreciates shortcuts in martial arts so your achievements do not interest me," Muten Roshi cut it down, defiant in the face of the invader of his island. If the worst-case scenario broke out, the godly master of martial arts counted on himself erupting with all of his power and firing his max power Kamehameha right at the talking submarine, hoping that it would somehow limit the production or control of these Bio-Men that seemed to be produced infinitely.

"As expected of a fist-swinging fool, you are plagued by your short-sightedness. Then again, you are a relic, I'll have you know that you are surpassed by almost every successor in the World Martial Arts Tournament and it only out of lack of living champions that I come knocking to your door, Roshi-san," Dr. Wheelo replied while the Bio-Men awaited for his command without as much as a twitch to their faces. Certainly, these folks appeared to be much more restrained than the Saibamen the Saiyans employed.

"Hey, what's going on here…" Bulma appeared, opening the door against Muten Roshi's wishes. One of the Bio-Men moved in a blur, given his superior speed and reaction, Muten Roshi raced against him but was swarmed by the rest of the ground, pressed and beaten into the ground while dozens of the biologically engineered critters bent his arms behind his back and held him down.

"Why if that isn't Bulma, the prodigious daughter of Dr. Brief? I am a great fan of your father's work, Bulma-san, though short-sighted, clinging to his primal ways of tinkering with nuts and bolts, his mind I can acknowledge being as the third smartest person on the planet. Inferior to mine by a wide margin but a close inferior to that of Dr. Gero himself," Dr. Wheelo continued to bleed ego as he postured at the scene of a Bio-Man rushing behind Bulma and taking her hostage.

"Well, that's not necessarily tru…" Bulma was about to argue, even when threatened to have her throat ripped out by a Bio-Man's claw when Muten Roshi intercepted her argument out of worry that the egotistical submarine would order his footmen to do something dark and rash if his shaky ego was questioned in any way.

"Did you come here just to gloat?" Muten Roshi growled. He might not have voiced his frustrations any better but it was hard to think up of something better to say on the fly when one's head was being stepped on by a Bio-Man while a handful more restrained and twisted his limbs preventing him from moving.

"Why no, not yet. The time for gloating shall come when I prove you once and for all that I, Dr. Wheelo, have made a breakthrough in the world of martial arts!" the talking submarine declared, revealing an elongated tail to segment out of an opening in its corpus that extended and scooped Bulma up, hiding her somewhere inside it before it proceeded to do the same with Muten Roshi.

While he did not appreciate being kidnapped off of his own home like that, Muten Roshi preferred being a tight, damp space alongside Bulma rather than being manhandled by a bunch of Bio-Men and being forced to wheeze at sand and struggle against having his joints dislocated all at once. A small monitor descended in front of the two captives from up above them and provided them with some limited lighting. Roshi could feel the submarine taking a plunge and rocketing off into some direction, likely to Wheelo's own headquarters.

"Greetings esteemed martial artists. You find yourselves invited by the smartest man alive – Dr. Wheelo to a challenge of your insignificant lifetimes. Given your thick-skulls, I have taken the luxury of kidnapping you against your will, for you would not otherwise contemplate the supreme importance of your role until it would be too late and your precious, flesh and bone bodies would be rendered useless to my experiment by my ever-loyal Bio-Men."

"Geez, this guy!" Bulma exclaimed, crossing her arms and legs as she pouted at being forced to stare at various blueprints and graphs being displayed on the screen though it was hardly the visual aspect of the show that displeased the young woman.

"I was a man as blessed with genius as I was cursed by it. My intelligence had been so ahead of time that, eventually, my human body had failed to sustain it and I was forced to transfer my most precious and the only relevant asset – my brain, into a more secure and trustworthy containment than the flawed and failing human body. I know that as martial artists you put all of your stocks into your pathetic bodies and while I mock such short-sightedness, this is also the point I intend to prove with this experiment."

"I am not overly fond of this fool myself either but it appears that we are trapped…" Muten Roshi attempted to break out of the cell they were being held tightly in but he couldn't garner enough strength to even leave a dent in it which was odd, given his unnatural strength. "Our only hope is that this Dr. Wheelo keeps it brief."

"In fact, I have chosen the field of martial arts especially because a genius such as myself is in need of a prime body, worthy of hosting an esteemed mind such as my own. At the moment of the failing of my own body, I had limited resources so I was forced to place myself into a mere cyborg body. Dr. Gero did not appear to share my interest in bio-engineering and thought that steel was the only potential successor to flesh and blood which was why I had to settle on allowing my dear assistant Dr. Kochin to do the operation. Yet another reason why I couldn't have been a chooser, I suppose…"

"Ugh… We're getting his whole life story, boy does this guy love to hear himself talk!" Bulma lamented her fate. Something told Roshi that she'd have rather preferred having her head ripped off by a Bio-Man on that beach back there rather than have to listen to this.

"And so, after decades of extensive research and constant breakthroughs in the field of bio-engineering that have all gone uncredited and shunned by the imbecilic scientific community of our time, I submit to you my thesis – a bio-engineered warrior possesses far greater combat potential than any human martial artist of our, or any other time. It is a grand thesis, indeed, and while it is almost self-evident, given how I am a firm supporter of the scientific method, I am forced to seek out all the living champions of the World Martial Arts Tournaments and pit them against my bio-engineered finest! To put it in terms that you nitwits can comprehend, I intend on hosting a tournament of sorts, with the prize being the ultimate honor of hosting the brain of the one and only Dr. Wheelo."

"Given his sense of honor in Kame Island, I wonder just how fair that tournament is going to be…" Muten Roshi ruffled his beard.

"To be fair, I do not expect it to be much of a competition. Given how it is obvious that all of you simpletons are going to be wiped out by my superior Bio-Warriors, it is only a matter of selecting a Bio-Warrior that will be chosen to be the greatest body to fit the most sublime intellect! After all, I have experienced first-hand how pathetic the human body is, its flaws, and its limitations. Bio-Warriors do not age, they do not die of natural causes and they are not plagued by diseases. Though I am getting ahead of time. You will soon have the chance to find out just how meritorious my magnificent warriors are."

"Hmph… Then why did you go ahead and kidnap me too?" Bulma pouted, choosing to completely ignore the video she was being shown.

"I don't think he's hearing you, Bulma, it appears that this is a pre-recorded video…" Muten Roshi pointed out.

"Typical…" Bulma scowled at the screen that had completed its light show and turned off, returning to the compartment which it came from. The corpus of Dr. Wheelo, however, continued in an ocean-splitting rush, building up speed in its journey back to his laboratory where he would soon host his self-hyped event to determine the worthy puppet for his mind to control.


	129. The Explosive Ice-Breaker

The compact, metallic prison in which Muten Roshi and Bulma found themselves imprisoned in rumbled, shaking up the pair of captives that it held within. Shortly thereafter, light seeped into the compartment as gravity took its toll and forced the shaken up pair to roll out in an unflattering position onto the frozen, ice floor. It was tough to say which prompted Bulma to jump on to her feet first, the embarrassing position of her tumble or the freezing steel which she faceplanted onto. With the inventor wearing nothing but a dress and a blazer, the woman began rubbing her hands and blowing hot air into them almost immediately.

"Welcome! Welcome to my laboratory!" the brain inside of a submarine that was Dr. Wheelo declared. The underwater vehicle began morphing until it took a more stationary position and then connected to a spot on the wall where it could have interacted with his captives better.

"You presumptuous ass, what did you need to take me here for!?" Bulma shook her fist at the gigantic configuration of robotics hosting Dr. Wheelo's massive brain. "I'm no martial artist. If I get a cold, you're gonna get it!"

Muten Roshi felt astounded and even a tad inspired by how fearless Bulma was. The enemy wielded enough strength to believe that he was able to defeat all of the strongest martial artists in the world and the genius to reverse-engineer and even improve on the design of the Saibamen that Saiyans used in battle in a matter of days. And yet Bulma was as fierce standing against him as she would have been bullying poor Yamcha.

"I apologize if the conditions aren't ideal for your fragile human body. I assure you that I do not intend to pit you against my Bio-Warriors. However, you and your father are esteemed scientists and superstars of the scientific community. While I do believe your achievements to be vastly overrated, I would be a fool not to acknowledge your prowess and respect your family and therefore I have taken up on this curious opportunity to have you be a witness to my scientific breakthrough." Dr. Wheelo explained as Muten Roshi began looking around. The entire laboratory had been sunken in shadows but he couldn't help but feel dread in the air as wicked Ki began creeping into his sensory range. They weren't alone here.

"A witness?" Bulma wrapped her arms over her chest. "Explain yourself!"

"Well, I am but an intellectual marvel, I am no brutal ruffian. I shall not tolerate unnecessary brutality and therefore I do not wish to resort to ripping off heads so that I can prove my point to the skeptical scientific community. The word of an esteemed prodigy in the field of science such as yourself will more than suffice when I report on my stunning breakthrough in the field of bio-engineering," Dr. Wheelo did as requested.

"You said that you were targeting all of the World Martial Arts Champions, correct?" Muten Roshi wondered. "Whom else have you brought here?"

"Sadly, most champions I have contacted have allowed their human bodies to fail them. We could not locate the Devil Man or any martial arts champions from tournaments earlier than the 19th World Martial Arts Tournament. Champion Baragon has abandoned his fighting ways and he now lives in luxury in a mansion filled with adoring female fans. Both of them are embarrassments to the art, they failed to defeat even the scouting party of Bio-Men. Nevertheless, I am a thorough professional, I shall locate Chayote and Son Goku promptly," Dr. Wheelo pointed out as he displayed pictures of a giant bipedal dragon monster with massive ears and a horn of his forehead with hunter-green skin and King Chappa, both beaten and broken with Baragon's adoring female fans and King Chappa's apprentices alike weeping over their defeated idols.

"Good luck with that," Bulma looked proud of herself as she made that declaration. "Son Goku is off-world at the moment, training in the Otherworld though Chayote will pummel you and your silly Bio-Men flat in no time at all."

"Dr. Wheelo…" a shrieking, senile voice came from a frozen platform up above the giant machinery sustaining Dr. Wheelo's brain. "There is a slight complication in the plan. As Bulma-san stated, neither Son Goku nor Chayote are anywhere on Earth. We simply cannot locate any signal of their existence, similarly how we couldn't find Devil Man or other deceased champions."

"You must be joking!" Dr. Wheelo's voice boomed over the lab, cracking and shattering layers of ice that had covered some of the long-unused devices and lab tubes inside of his laboratory. "We cannot afford a sloppy experiment! Our conclusions will be rendered null and void with a sample size of only one World Martial Arts champion!"

The other voice belonged to an elderly man of paled out gray skin and a head misshapen by its age and marked with male patterned baldness. It would have been a daunting task finding someone who recalled the times when this man still had any teeth in his mouth. The man's features had been twisted by his unnatural age, there were no signs of bulk, and his ears and eyes vastly outmatched the other, shriveled features of the man's body.

"This is Dr. Kochin, the only assistant to whom I could have entrusted the task of operating on my precious brain," Dr. Wheelo introduced the interloper to his guests. "What a disgrace… To be foiled by the fragility of the human body again, why couldn't all of you sickly martial artists last just a little bit longer? No matter, we have proof that my Bio-Men have beaten Baragon and Dr. Chappa. Let us proceed with the experiment and present those photographs as proof, our situation could not have been helped."

"Yes, Dr. Wheelo!" Dr. Kochin bowed and cupped his hands by his mouth. "Bio-Warriors! It's your turn to fight now!"

Blitzes of pink, green and yellow danced across the laboratory stage, forcing Muten Roshi to brace himself for an impending attack and take a fighting stance while Bulma cowered behind him. The three rampant Ki signatures settled in place, finally allowing the sum of their features to take form before the weathered martial arts master.

One of them was a tall, pink brawler with red hair that laid tied behind his back in a ponytail. The other one was a human-sized reptilian of green skin and sickly, red dots all over his body. Whatever creatures were spliced together to create this warrior, the reptilian possessed all of their collective features, including pointed ears and dorsal fins down his back. The third one was an enormous yellow blob with a face full of sluggish features, thick lips, and antennae hanging low from his face.

"Behold, the Bio-Warriors! Created by my hand, guided by the brilliant intellect of Dr. Wheelo, these are the finest testaments of Dr. Wheelo's genius. Magnificent in every way and unburdened by the limits of their humanity!" Dr. Kochin praised the trio as they loomed over the distressed Muten Roshi.

"Okay, so Dr. Kochin is clearly just a robot, right?" Bulma poked fun at the evil scientist, forcing him to lean back in fright that he could have been accused of such a thing.

"How dare you!? The very idea…!" Dr. Kochin shook his fist out. "I am the trusted assistant to Dr. Wheelo. Without me, this entire operation would have been impossible! For years I've sought a way to free Dr. Wheelo from the icy prison of his laboratory as I was out for groceries in North City when the frost sealed it off. Finally, during a cataclysm in the northern region, the ice was destroyed and I was finally able to access the laboratory and tend to Dr. Wheelo… For you to accuse me of…"

Dr. Wheelo erupted in thunderous, robotic-sounding laughter. The spread of cheer and joy through the entire area sent more ice-shattering shockwaves across the stage.

"What an intelligent young lady. Truly you shall transcend the narrow mindset of your father. Tell me, Bulma, what gave it away?" Dr. Wheelo wondered sounding amused.

"Well, nobody in their right mind would ever buy into your vanity project and second your arrogance. It takes a robot programmed to sing praises to you to compliment someone who's so busy doing it himself. Plus, you said that you trusted the only man you could to operate on you and you're too full of yourself to ever trust anyone else but yourself. The only way anybody could have done that surgery is if it's a robot guided by yourself," Bulma crossed her arms and pouted, pointing out her observations.

"You're doing an excellent job, Bulma, keep him talking…" Muten Roshi's telepathic signal rung in Bulma's mind, surprising the prodigious inventor for a second but she was quick to regain her graces. She didn't think much of such a task as it was pretty much accomplishing itself.

"Ebifurya, Kishime, Misokatsun, pummel that old buffoon into submission and kill that woman too!" Dr. Kochin snapped, grabbing the railing in front of him and shaking it violently. "Dr. Wheelo… How could you…? I thought that I was your assistant Dr. Kochin, not some lowly robot wearing an old skinsuit."

The Bio-Warriors shuffled in between each other as they rushed toward Muten Roshi all at once. This was not the plan which Dr. Wheelo intended and the floating brain let it be known with loud and unintelligible objections. Ebifurya slammed his entire body into Muten Roshi, taking the old man off his feet and sending him flying back and stunned. Kishime's reptilian body began vanishing in snaps all around the laboratory as he raced toward the blown back martial artist but only Muten Roshi's afterimage dispersed after Kishime tried breaking his spine with a kick from the back.

Muten Roshi returned to his senses just in time to dash aside and avoid a falling body slam from Misokatsun. The veteran martial artist quickly cupped his hands together and channeled a Kamehameha at the flopped Bio-Warrior who still laid on his blobby belly but the Ki attack just bounced off of his gelatinous body as Misokatsun smacked his bulk with an expression that was as overjoyed as it was malicious.

"Dr. Kochin, what are you doing? You are sabotaging this entire experiment!" Dr. Wheelo finally started making some sense when the static from his laboratory tech cleared out. Muten Roshi continued to hold his own against vastly superior opponents, hoping to hold out for as long as he could but even a single one of them would have proven to be a daunting challenge for him. "Establish order back into it and reset it, I order this!"

Dr. Kochin appeared conflicted with himself. Jolts of electricity burst forth from his body as he appeared to be wrestling against his own body but he then lifted his hand up and, as if responding to a direct command, the Bio-Warriors all backed out of the fight and lined up in an orderly fashion.

"Dr. Wheelo… I did everything you asked for. I gathered and bought up explosives from defunct Red Ribbon army members to blow the ice off of your lab, even if the cataclysmic event that freed you wouldn't have taken place, the explosives would have freed you anyway. Do you mean to tell me that nothing about me is real?" Dr. Kochin lamented as he moved and acted as a mere puppet to his master's will despite speaking something entirely different and quite rebellious.

"Do not be silly, of course not. Do you think I would have let a mere uneducated robot do my bidding? I had you acquire multiple PhDs in medicine and engineering from an online university so you have two legitimate doctorates, Dr. Kochin. You've served me adequately in all tasks but one, eliminating those pesky bats from my lab!" Dr. Wheelo objected as a lonely bat thrashed about in the air, looking for a way to escape the laboratory in its predicament. Dr. Kochin shook his metal cane in the air, trying to swat the flying mammal out of the air.

"This is nonsense, bats don't even live in this area of the world!" Dr. Kochin objected as the bat flapped away from his sight and hid somewhere.

"You must have brought it back with your groceries then, the poor little thing…" Dr. Wheelo replied. "Either way, let's proceed with the experiment but make it fair. Crush this feeble old man one at a time and don't touch Bulma-san. I will not allow any harm to come to such a bright young mind."

Ebifurya stepped forth, cracking his knuckles. This was troublesome as Ebifurya was the most powerful of all three Bio-Warriors judging by his Ki signature alone though something told Muten Roshi that things weren't quite so simple. Even with a tremendous Ki such as Ebifurya's, he'd not have been able to shrug off the Kamehameha as Misokatsun did. These Bio-Warriors possessed individual talents of their own as well.

The pink brute threw his hand out, firing a simple Ki blast in Muten Roshi's direction and prompting the martial arts master to leap away from the blast so that he could avoid any damage. Bulma hurried to a remote corner of the lab as well as the shockwave from the blast threw her a good distance back. The fact that Bulma was affected by a blast of someone so powerful yet didn't suffer any damage alarmed Roshi – that suggested that Ebifurya didn't put all too much Ki into his attack which was a bad sign suggesting distraction.

"Freezing Fist!" Ebifurya shouted out, pumping his fist out into the air and forming an intense ice wave that rushed at Muten Roshi and froze him into a frigid block of ice that fell flat onto the ground, breaking off a few chunks though, fortunately, none of them carried any limbs or pieces of the frozen martial arts master though it gave Bulma an almost lethal scare.

"Hmm… Disappointing indeed if that is all from the world-famous champion of the 13th World Martial Arts Tournament, Muten Roshi." Dr. Wheelo proclaimed. "What's this? It appears that he still has a quite vigorous heartbeat even when frozen solid… How amusing. I very much look forward to having a body that defies our understanding of the laws of physics and human anatomy like that. Ebifurya, take care of it! I can hardly wait!"

"Yes, Dr. Wheelo!" Ebifurya nodded with a rich smirk on his face and extended his hand again, blasting Muten Roshi with another blast of frost, then another, building onto his chilling grave with each frosty airwave that passed it.

"This is going too slow! His heartbeat is barely slowing down!" Dr. Kochin objected to the chosen strategy of his Bio-Warrior. "I understand that you are eager to show off your spectacular Freezing Fist technique to Dr. Wheelo so that he chooses you as his new body but Dr. Wheelo will not stand a body that cannot do the job despite having the largest power out of all the Bio-Warriors."

"Fine…" Ebifurya blew out his cheeks, evidently being caught red-handed as to the strategy that he had chosen. He generated a couple of Ki blasts in his hands, preparing to reduce the massive block of ice into oblivion but his attack froze in mid-motion. It stopped disrupted by Dr. Kochin's shriek.

"What is it, Dr. Kochin?" Dr. Wheelo wondered what warranted such an ecstatic reaction from Dr. Kochin.

"Dr. Wheelo! We did it! We found Son Goku! The champion of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament! Evidently, he survived the Tournament of Doom incident!" Dr. Kochin declared. "This is odd… His life signature is somewhere around Kame Island where we picked up Muten Roshi from."

"That's odd, we never told Goku about the meeting. We thought he'd still be training in the Otherworld," Bulma muttered.

"Very well, quick, eliminate this chaff and let us move on to testing Son Goku. If my Bio-Warriors can overcome him, then there can be no equal to their power and I shall take the body that strikes the finishing blow!" Dr. Wheelo proclaimed, encouraging Ebifurya to wrap up here. The pink brute extended his hand to decimate the ice block to pieces when a loud pop distracted him once more.

"Drat!" a squeaky voice alerted all present toward the more precise location of the popping closer to the computer panels of the lab. "My transformation timed out…"

"That bat, it's no bat at all! It's some pig!" Dr. Wheelo stated the obvious.

"He's no pig, he's an Animal-Type human!" Dr. Kochin paled out. "You, step away from that console!"

"Heh, heh…" Oolong made a malevolent expression with his face as he began mashing the buttons on the panel in a mad flurry. The entire laboratory sunk into a disarray of beaming red light as sirens began shrieking all over the place before their wear and tear muzzled them in an unnatural conclusion to their disturbing song.

"That madman set off the explosives!" Dr. Kochin's jaw dropped.

"What!? Why is our own laboratory rigged with explosives?" Dr. Wheelo lost his cool, realizing that his precious work and possibly even his mechanical body might have been as good as gone.

"It's for the ice, Dr. Wheelo, I planned to use them to blow up the ice in your lab," Dr. Kochin pat his balding head, looking apologetic.

"B-But why leave them there then once the cataclysm freed it from the ice already?" Dr. Wheelo asked with a stumped tone.

"B-But what if another mad arctic storm hits and your laboratory freezes over again? Better be safe than sorry…" Dr. Kochin chuckled, fully realizing the error of his thoughts now.

The electricity in Kochin's body intensified, sending the poor robotic doctor down on the ground as the burst of his own sparks from various openings in his mechanical body blinded the doctor. In his mad struggle, Dr. Kochin tore off his fake human flesh from his joints, exposing his metallic endoskeleton in those areas.

"Dr… Dr. Wheelo! What are you doing!?" Dr. Kochin begged his master for clarification why Dr. Wheelo was sending surges of electric signals through Dr. Kochin's robotic body that utterly paralyzed him in place.

"One thing that I cannot stand, even from you, Dr. Kochin, is incompetence. Despite your doctorates from an online university, you've proven to be just as disappointing as those fleshy humans. That's alright, after all, as a mere robot I did not expect excellence like that of a bio-engineered warrior. Your fate was always meant to be this, Dr. Kochin…" Dr. Wheelo pointed out as he detached from the laboratory wall and took the shape of a submarine again. His mechanical tail rotated in front of him and drilled through the ice, letting Dr. Wheelo escape the demise of his laboratory.

As the Bio-Warriors flew up and blasted their own way out, Bulma ran up to the hole that Dr. Wheelo dug up, trying to crawl into it and back up onto the surface of the glacier but Oolong started pulling her by Bulma's dress.

"Stop! We've gotta pull out old-timer too!" he objected.

"It's your fault we're in this situation so you do it!" Bulma snapped back but then she realized that Muten Roshi had already been resurrected with the Dragon Balls meaning that she needed to drag that massive block of ice out somehow. A square beam pierced through the ceiling of the lab, melting it away without much effort as Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu, Yamcha, and Krillin descended onto the lab.

"We've sensed Muten Roshi's Ki all the way up here and wondered what could have happened…" Chiaotzu proclaimed as he extended his hands and used his telekinesis to move the block of ice that Muten Roshi was encased in out from the lab while the rest picked up Bulma and Oolong and pulled them out too.

"Sorry, you'll have to stick around until we beat these guys," Krillin gave Bulma a confident smirk after putting her down on a flat surface of a glacier floating over the northern ocean.

"Who even are these guys anyway?" Yamcha wondered.

"Some crazy scientist with a bunch of bio-engineered warriors by his side. He was freed from his lab when Bardock and Piccolo fought each other and wrecked the northern region up," Bulma gave him the short version. "You'll get the details from him, trust me, he doesn't stop talking about himself."

"That's just fine. I just love shutting up the mouthful types." Tenshinhan fixed his wristband and took a fighting stance, preparing to take on Dr. Wheelo's Bio-Warriors.

"Well, well… More martial artists. You just won't do, I'm afraid," Dr. Wheelo proclaimed as the landmass where his laboratory was located blew up behind him, dying the entire area in outbursts of red light and thick, blinding smoke. "I need strong champions for my experiment, not some rejects that got themselves eliminated halfway…"


End file.
